Internet Communications Engine

This release adds a redesigned facets API, new chapters in the
Ice manual on facets and the IcePatch service, and numerous other
improvements and bugfixes.

This release adds a set of tools for inspecting and migrating Freeze databases, Windows support for the IcePack and Glacier services, platform support for Windows 9x/ME, HP-UX, and MacOS X, and numerous other improvements and bugfixes.

This version features a garbage collector for Ice for C++
that automatically resolves cyclic object dependencies in
class instances, and a new database migration tool that
provides much greater control over the migration process
than the old XML schema based approach. Freeze now
uses transactions for all write operations, a Freeze
background thread periodically saves created, modified
and destroyed objects, and a new Freeze evictor index
class provides easy-to-use and efficient secondary-key
querying. Marshaling performance has been
improved, and there are numerous minor improvements
and bugfixes.

This version features minor bugfixes and improved
documentation.

Support for Solaris, including Sun C++ compiler versions 5.3, 5.4, and 5.5, 32 and 64 bit. Support for Linux on AMD Opteron, 32 and 64 bit. Windows installers for Visual Studio .NET. Enhancements to the Ice protocol, including support for exception and class slicing. Dynamic thread pools for more efficient resource utilization. Active connection management to automatically close idle connections and re-open them on demand. Improved C++ signal handling facilities. Simplified and enhanced C++ threading and locking primitives. Documentation enhancements, including a new Ice Protocol chapter.