CORBA3 — rep_id() operation on Object?

I'm seeing more and more questions along the lines of:

"How can I get the repository ID of an object, given its reference?"

The standard answer is to call get_interface() and to then grope around
in the IFR. However, that's cumbersome, and the IFR may well not be
populated or running.

So, why is it that there is no way to get the repository ID from the target
object directly? I would think that adding something like the following
to CORBA::Object would work nicely:

interface Object

;

As far as the implementation is concerned, it would be trivial. We'd have
another "_rep_id" operation name in IIOP (similar to "_get_interface" and
"_non_existent"). On the server side, the implementation would simply
return the repository ID of the servant (the result of _primary_interface()
in the C++ mapping).

Yes, I know, we'd have to rev IIOP (which we are due to do some time
soon anyway, so we might as well add this at the same time).

Apart from the IIOP issue, I'd be interested in hearing what other people
think of this idea. Any glitches with it?

see above