A CORBA object reference is a handle for a particular CORBA object implemented by a server. A CORBA object reference identifies the same CORBA object each time the reference is used to invoke a method on the object. A CORBA object may have multiple, distinct object references.

The org.omg.CORBA.Object interface is the root of the inheritance hierarchy for all CORBA object references in the Java programming language, analogous to java.rmi.Remote for RMI remote objects.

A CORBA object may be either local or remote. If it is a local object (that is, running in the same VM as the client), invocations may be directly serviced by the object instance, and the object reference could point to the actual instance of the object implementation class. If a CORBA object is a remote object (that is, running in a different VM from the client), the object reference points to a stub (proxy) which uses the ORB machinery to make a remote invocation on the server where the object implementation resides.

Default implementations of the methods in the interface org.omg.CORBA.Object are provided in the class org.omg.CORBA.portable.ObjectImpl, which is the base class for stubs and object implementations.