Look at this mess! The good news is that you don't have to write all of this (unless you really like that sort of thing). Instead, you can write a "normal" HTML page that references the CORBA client applet and then run a converter program, which you can download from the www.javasoft.com web site. Look for the HTML JRE 1.2 Plug-in converter.

Why all this complexity? As of this writing, no browser supports the JDK 1.2, which is required to use the Java IDL which we have covered. To solve this problem, Sun has created a browser plug-in application that substitutes a JDK 1.2 virtual machine for the browser's normal JVM. So, before running a CORBA Java applet, you need to download the plug-in from the javasoft web site and configure your browser to use it. Then you can run the converter mentioned previously to create the HTML such that the plug-in is activated.

It sure was a lot easier in RMI! However, this complexity results from the fact that browsers typically lag the JDK. Once the browser vendors become compliant with JDK 1.2, writing CORBA client applets will be a lot easier.

Now on to deployment!