Python, CORBA, and Borland Java interop?

[Dave Benjamin]

Hello,

The company I work for, 3dex.com, has a large system written in Java
(J2EE) using the Borland Enterprise AppServer. Since AppServer is
built on the VisiBroker CORBA platform, the entire class library can
(theoretically) be exposed via CORBA. We would like to use Python as a
CORBA client.

After trying various open-source Python ORBs (Fnorb, OmniORB, ORBit,
etc.) the same issue came up every time. None of them support the
"valuetype" feature of IDL (part of the CORBA 2.3 standard), but
AppServer uses these everywhere. We can't even call a simple function
returning a string because of this. From my research thus far, it
seems like this is not a simple feature to add.

A good explanation of the valuetype feature and how it applies to
Java/CORBA integration appears here:
http://www.componentworld.nu/corp/news/Articles/Other/15.asp

Does anyone know of a possible solution (open source or commercial) to
this Python->Java interoperability issue?

The ability to do this would be a major asset to the company, as it
would free us to develop web front-ends in our language of choice! Any
help you could offer would be greatly appreciated.

Sincerely,
Dave Benjamin
Software Developer, 3dex