CORBA actually supports both "object handle over network" and "ship some actual local object as part of a request/response". It's basically a way of addressing

CORBA actually supports both "object handle over network" and "ship some actual local object as part of a request/response". It's basically a way of addressing typical FFI/IPC concerns in a way that's actually network- and location-transparent, and that thus also addresses the concerns of distributed programming (for example, making something network-transparent introduces network faults as a possibility, and your system needs to deal with them appropriately!)