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# 5.1 Initialising the ORB

The ORB is a singleton i.e. there is at most one `ORB` instance per process. The ORB is created and initialised using the method `CORBA.ORB_init()` which is declared as follows:

    def ORB_init(argv=[], orb_id=ORB_ID):
        """ Initialise the ORB.

        This is a factory method for the ORB class (the ORB is a
        singleton (i.e. there can only be one ORB instance per process)).

        """

The first parameter, `argv`, is a list of command line configuration options (often passed into an application via the Python variable `sys.argv`). The second parameter is the ORB identifier which in Fnorb must always be the value `CORBA.ORB_ID`. The `ORB_init()` method can be called as many times as you like, and always returns a reference to the active ORB. Note that for convenience `ORB_init()` can be called with no parameters at all.