"It is tempting to look at CORBA and quickly determine that it is simply a network transport layer for building software.
Or put another way, that CORBA answers the question: how will application component XYZ talk with component ABC?"
While this is true and of significant value - it is nice to have a debugged, optimized tool that allows easy creation of distributed applications - CORBA is actually much more. As we explore CORBA we will see that the specification provides a sophisticated framework for both object and application level services that is designed to be as open as possible at every level. This focus on openness is CORBA's greatest strength. As we move forward, we will repeatedly take the time to ask "Why CORBA?"

The Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) [OMG:95a] is an emerging open distributed object computing infrastructure being standardized by the Object Management Group (OMG). CORBA automates many common network programming tasks such as

1. object registration,
2. location, and
3. activation.

Other functions that Corba fulfilles are

1. request demultiplexing,
2. framing and error-handling,
3. parameter marshalling and demarshallin, and
4. operation dispatching.