The Object Request Broker (ORB) is the central component of CORBA. The ORB provides the required infrastructure to identify and locate objects, handle connection management, deliver data, and request communication.
A CORBA object never talks directly with another. Instead, the object makes requests through a remote stub to the ORB running on the local machine. The local ORB then passes the request to an ORB on the other machine using the Internet Inter-Orb Protocol (IIOP for short). The remote ORB then locates the appropriate object, processes the request, and returns the results.
IIOP can be used as a Remote Method Invocation (RMI) protocol by applications or objects using RMI-IIOP. Remote clients of enterprise beans (EJB modules) communicate with the Application Server via RMI-IIOP.