A system and method that provides remoting services in a distributed object system is provided. The system includes a remote object monitor and a remote object manipulator. The remote object monitor can provide a human readable reference to a remote object, where the human readable reference is a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) and can include protocol information, protocol data, an application name and an object URI (Uniform Resource Identifier). The remote object monitor can also provide metadata concerning a remote object, where the metadata can include information concerning interfaces implemented by a remote object, the type of a remote object, the class hierarchy of a remote object, methods implemented by a remote object, properties implemented by a remote object and attributes implemented by a remote object. The remote object monitor can also provide entry points and code interception for custom attribute based activation processing that can be performed before, after and/or substantially in parallel with non-attribute code associated with a remote object. The remote object monitor can also monitor and/or control the lifetime of a remote object, using, for example, a lease manager. The remote object manipulator can also update metadata concerning a remote object and can control the lifetime of a remote object via a lease manager, for example.