I am actually not to sure if there is a full featured Perl ORB (CORBA) around - actually I was looking for one a year ago ... Your design really depends what you are planing to do. Loose coupling of 2 processes (lightwight) SOAP might not be the worst idea (well, you can serialize the object on you own and send it via 'text message' or as attachment ...). If you are going to start with CORBA (which definitly is a good thing) take your time ;) Best regards Hartwig