Announcing the release of Fnorb 1.1

[Anthony J Wilkinson]

Greetings one and all,

Announcing the release of version 1.1 of 'Fnorb' the Python CORBA ORB.

The major change with this version is that there is now type checking
employed in the marshalling process. This has two major ramifications:
1) fnorb will no longer dump core when given incorrect types - an exception
   will be thrown instead.
2) some code that works under 1.01 due to non-standard language mappings
   will encounter problems.

In tightening up the type restrictions some otherwise working code will fail.
This decision has not been made lightly and, after much discussion and debate,
we have opted for a scheme that is a little more tolerant than the language
mapping specification. In this way we hope to achieve a balance between
Python's flexibility and CORBA's type safety.

Along with this there are numerous patches and bug fixes which are detailed
in the CHANGES document.

Things on the To Do RSN list:-

1) Allow fnidl to re-open modules
2) Implement the POA
3) Incrementally implement the rest of the CORBA datatypes

Get more details and download Fnorb from:-

	http://www.fnorb.com/

The Fnorb Development Team

c/o

Anthony
_____________________________________________________________________
Anthony J Wilkinson                                  anthony at dstc.com
Software Engineer                                     http://dstc.com
DSTC Pty Ltd                                     Ph:  +61 7 3365 4310

---- From the Fnorb README ----

What is Fnorb?

Fnorb is a CORBA 2.0 ORB written in Python (with just the eensiest-teensiest
bit of C code for marshalling and parsing ;^). Python is a mature,
interpreted, object-oriented programming language with powerful high-level
datatypes that make it ideally suited as a scripting language for CORBA.

Fnorb gives the Python programmer access to the wonderful world of CORBA,
like ILU from Xerox PARC. It supports all CORBA 2.0 datatypes (including
Any's) and provides a full implementation of IIOP.  Unlike ILU, Fnorb is
Python and CORBA/IDL specific which makes it simple, light-weight, and easy
to install and use.

Using Fnorb, you no longer have to use <insert your least favourite language
here - who said C++ ;^)> to write CORBA clients and servers - you can now
use Python.  This makes Fnorb ideal for prototyping complex CORBA architectures,
for use as a scripting tool, and for building test harnesses for all your CORBA
development projects.

The Python language mapping used by Fnorb is based on the document currently
undergoing the final stages of the OMG standardisation process.

Fnorb is being developed by the Distributed Systems Technology Centre Pty Ltd.
http://www.dstc.edu.au/