Basically, yes. The real object lives on the server and its code is executed there. You get a handle (sometimes called a proxy object since it stands in as the proxy for the real, remote instance) on the client side that takes care of marshalling the arguments (rolling them up into the XML wire format) and getting them sent to the server where the actual method runs. Any return value is again marshalled back into XML and returned to the caller, which turns things back into perl values.