Eamonn McManus's Blog

Best Practices for JMX Technology

We've posted a detailed set of guidelines for using the JMX API, the result of several years' experience with it.

Starting from the JMX Technology Home Page at http://java.sun.com/jmx, you can now find a link "JMX Best Practices" in the navigation bar at the left, leading you to the detailed best practices document. This covers many basic and advanced topics, such as how to name MBeans, how to choose between the different kinds of MBeans, how to handle complex data types, MBean interface evolution, and correct use of notifications.

Although this is already a fairly big document, there might be other areas that you'd like to see covered, or problems that you see with the existing text. Feedback would be very welcome, either here or at jmx-spec-comments@sun.com.

Comments

• How about putting down best practices for "Using MBeans as Model". Model as M in MVC.

  How to use MBeanInfo class or perhaps write a type safe wrapper on MBeanInfo classes ?

  Posted by: cprashantreddy on June 15, 2005 at 11:06 PM

• Prashant, could you say a bit more about what you have in mind here?

  There's a topic that would be worth mentioning, and I'm not sure if it's what you mean by your first point. That is the notion of having a fundamental model defined by MBeans, and one or more exported models that are defined in terms of that model. The exported models might be other MBeans, or they might be other systems like SNMP or CIM. In either case, a mediation layer maps the exported models to the fundamental model.

  Posted by: emcmanus on June 16, 2005 at 02:00 AM

• Since JMX and MBeans are standard way Java system expose their management capabilities, it is obvious that MBeans sit in the Model layer that powers various views. MBeans are built agnostic of the kind of view being used - HTML or SNMP etc.

  Best practices about how these systems can use MBeanInfo, or other wrapper Info objects that are build on MBeans is what i had in mind.

  Posted by: cprashantreddy on June 16, 2005 at 09:55 PM

• I've implemented the guidlines for naming contained MBeans, but now JConsole gets completely confused about the containment hierarchy.
  My original names followed this pattern:

  OSProcess=Process for SOAP processor monitor@cnd0966
  OSProcess=Process for SOAP processor monitor@cnd0966,ldapCache=LDAP cache
  OSProcess=Process for SOAP processor monitor@cnd0966,processor=monitor@cnd0966
  OSProcess=Process for SOAP processor monitor@cnd0966,processor=monitor@cnd0966,soapConnector=SOAP Connector

  With the best practice pattern implemented, they now look like this:

  name="Process for SOAP processor monitor@cnd0966",type=OSProcess
  name="LDAP cache",type=OSProcess.ldapCache,OSProcess="Process for SOAP processor monitor@cnd0966"
  name="monitor@cnd0966",type=OSProcess.processor,OSProcess="Process for SOAP processor monitor@cnd0966"
  name="SOAP Connector",processor="monitor@cnd0966",type=OSProcess.processor.soapConnector,OSProcess="Process for SOAP processor monitor@cnd0966"

  
  Will there be a new version of JConsole that implements the naming pattern?

  Thanks, Bert Roos

  Posted by: broos on June 22, 2005 at 07:42 AM

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