Collaborative infrastructures using the WWW and CORBA-based environments

The current proliferation of the World Wide Web (WWW) and the growing popularity of the Java language for programming such environments has fuelled a need for Web browsers to provide access to the variety of information sources and services now available on the Internet. In parallel to this revolution, computer vendors have been cooperating to develop an interoperable standard for communication which is based on the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA). We present the tools we have developed that provide powerful mechanisms for accessing any service based upon the interoperable CORBA standards from the popular WWW browsers. These tools are available in the public domain and have been downloaded and used around the world for building practical, fieldable systems.