This book is divided into four parts and a number of appendixes: • Part I, Ice Overview, provides an overview of the features offered by Ice and explains the Ice object model. After reading this part, you will understand the major features and architecture of the Ice platform, its object model and request dispatch model, and know th e basic steps required to build a simple application in C++, Java, C#, Visual Basic, and Python. • Part II, Slice, explains the Slice definition language. After reading this part, you will have detailed knowledge of how to specify interfaces and types for a distributed application. • Part III, Language Mappings, contains a sub-part for each of the language mappings. After reading the relevant sub-part, you will know how to implement an application in your language of choice. Part IV, Advanced Ice, presents many Ice features in detail and covers advanced aspects of server development, such as properties, threading, object life cycle, object location, persistence, and asynchronous as well as dynamic method invocation and dispatch. After reading this part, you will understand the advanced features of Ice and how to effectively use them to find the correct trade-off between performance and resource consumption as appropriate for your application requirements. • Part V, Ice Services, covers the services provided with Ice, such as IceGrid (a sophisticated deployment tool), Glacier2 (the Ice firewall solution), IceStorm (the Ice messaging service), and IcePatch2 (a software patching service).2 • The appendixes contain the Ice reference material. e basic steps required to build a simple application in C++, Java, C#, Visual Basic, and Python. • Part II, Slice, explains the Slice definition language. After reading this part, you will have detailed knowledge of how to specify interfaces and types for a distributed application. • Part III, Language Mappings, contains a sub-part for each of the language mappings. After reading the relevant sub-part, you will know how to implement an application in your language of choice. Part IV, Advanced Ice, presents many Ice features in detail and covers advanced aspects of server development, such as properties, threading, object life cycle, object location, persistence, and asynchronous as well as dynamic method invocation and dispatch. After reading this part, you will understand the advanced features of Ice and how to effectively use them to find the correct trade-off between performance and resource consumption as appropriate for your application requirements. • Part V, Ice Services, covers the services provided with Ice, such as IceGrid (a sophisticated deployment tool), Glacier2 (the Ice firewall solution), IceStorm (the Ice messaging service), and IcePatch2 (a software patching service).2 • The appendixes contain the Ice reference material.