This is an intriguing use case. I think you are encountering a limitation in how the client-side ORB works with multiple server-side ORBs.
Currently (as you know) the client-side ORB can work with multiple ORB instances so long as those ORBs are in a cluster, and it treats them as a failover group in a single cluster. That is, when the client-side ORB needs to connect to a server-side ORB it will try to connect to one of the ones in the ORB list that has been specified to it. (You mentioned that you are using Java Web Start. If you are using the built-in GlassFish support for app client launching using Java Web Start then the relevant ORB endpoint addresses are handled automatically for you. On the other hand, for launching app clients using the appclient script you need to edit the sun-acc.xml file so it specifies multiple IIOP endpoints on the servers.) The ORBs of a cluster share the same namespace.
Once connected this way into the (single) cluster's ORBs, the client-side ORB has that single namespace to work with.
I do not know if the client-side ORB has the ability to connect to multiple, non-clustered ORBs. If so, that is certainly not a feature that is exposed either by our Java Web Start support or by the sun-acc.xml mechanism for specifying the server-side ORBs' IIOP addresses.
We need the ORB experts to chime in here.
- Tim
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