[DeanRoddey]

The ORB is incredibly powerful. There's good video on it on my Youtube channel that demonstrates what it can do.

And the related IDL compiler also allows for very powerful enumerations, far beyond what C++ itself offers.

One reason ORBs have never caught on in C++ is exactly because there's no comprehensive, monolithic framework. It only works really in those scenarios. When you have such a thing, then any class that supports the binary streaming mixing can be passed back and forth to remote ORB calls.

It's at the foundation of the CQC layer which has MANY complicated client/server interfaces. Without the ORB they would be a massive PITA. With it, they are quite manageable.