FAQ 35.02 What is an ORB?

ORB stands for Object Request Broker. The ORB is the plumbing that enables member functions to be called on objects that may be remote and/or may be written in different programming languages.

A key feature of the ORB is transparency. The caller of a member function does not need to know whether the object is local or remote (location transparency), the programming language used to implement the object (implementation transparency), or the type of computer that the object is running on (hardware transparency). The overall effect is to provide seamless communication among objects that may be distributed on a heterogeneous network of computers.