ORB - Object Request Broker

The ORB - Object Request Broker - serves as the communications controller.

An ORB is usually implemented as a library that links with both clients and servers. The client uses the ORB in order to access CORBA objects, and in order to perform various communications operations.

All method invocations are directed by the ORB to the correct location of the CORBA object - be it in the same process, in a different process on the same machine, or on a different host.

Communications between different ORBs is done using GIOP - General Inter-ORB Protocol. This protocol is mapped to IIOP - Internet Inter-ORB Protocol - for communications across IP networks.