Boris,
in the next 5.2.0 release(coming within a couple of weeks) we have added static public void registerConvertor(Class<?> clazz, IString2DataConvertor conv) method to the String2DataConvertorFactory. It should solve your problem.
Your approach with the tracer seems absolutely correct, if you have ideas on how to improve Tracer API, please share.
Jan,
you may try to do Thread.currentThread().setContextClassLoader(...your web app classloader here - make sure that it has all openl libraries)
before instantiating the wrapper. Please let me know if it worked.