Ice provides a plug-in facility that allows you to load new features into your application, without changing this application's code. Depending on the programming language, a plug-in is packaged as a shared library or a static library, a set of Java classes, or a .NET assembly.
You control the loading and initialization of plug-ins with Ice configuration properties, and the plug-ins themselves are configured through Ice configuration properties.
Ice relies on plug-ins to implement a number of features, such as IceSSL (a secure transport for Ice over SSL/TLS).
This section describes the plug-in facility in more detail and demonstrates how to implement an Ice plug-in.