ALEXANDRIA, VA (June 6, 2002) - IDEAlliance and the ICE (Information and Content Exchange) Authoring Group have announced an open comment period for the Draft Use Cases for ICE2 Specification. According to Dr. Richard Martin, Chairman of the ICE2 Specification Development Committee, "For the next version of the ICE protocol, it is critical to consider integration of Web Services' related standards for the ICE2 definition. Given that syndication was one of the first XML-based web services (ICE won the Seybold Technology Trailblazer award for 1998), it only makes sense that with ICE2 the ICE Authoring Group would endorse the foundational standards that have emerged to support web services. Building on the Web Services standards will make ICE easier for learn and implement." The ICE Authoring Group and IDEAlliance are now seeking comments or any other feedback from firms who have interest in putting the proposed ICE2 specification to use. The tentative release date for the ICE2 specification is September 2002. The deadline for comments is June 17, and additional use cases will be accepted through June 30. We're real excited about this," added Martin. "So far we've gotten a lot of support from the working groups, as well as companies like Vignette, Oracle, Active Data Exchange, Syndic8, and other members of the RSS community." "Thousands of companies are using ICE-based products from vendors such as Active Data Exchange, Haht Commerce, Intershop, Macromedia, Oracle, Quark, Stellent, Vignette and Xenosys," commented ICE Authoring Group chair Laird Popkin. "The work we're doing to update the standard will make it easier to automate even more tasks and will help knit the digital economy more tightly together." ICE2 identified and released a requirements document in February of 2002 which was based upon the lessons learned during the past four years of ICE implementations. With the present innovations taking place in the XML community, the ICE Authoring Group has reviewed and is refining ICE to meet the growing demands of businesses. The goal is to express the ICE2 content syndication standard as a Web Service. This first major revision of the ICE Specification focuses on compatibility with the three major Web Services Standards æ WSDL, SOAP and UDDI. David Steinhardt, President and CEO of IDEAlliance, said, "We are opening the technical development and seek input from the entire industry to ensure that ICE2 meets the requirements of the broader community." Development of the ICE2 specification is an open industry activity, and user participation is welcomed. The draft Use Cases are available for download in PDF format at www.icestandard.org. To learn more about participation in the ICE development activity, e-mail Laird Popkin, Chairman of the ICE Authoring Group, at [email protected] or Dr. Richard Martin, Vice Chairman of the ICE-AG and Chairman of the ICE2 development effort, at [email protected]. ICE members encourage participation through the [email protected] or through joining the ICE-AG and IDEAlliance.