Introduction

Welcome! You have just opened your key to the secret art of management. This book is your comprehensive guide to the development of manageable application software using the Java Management Extensions (JMX). Now that Java has made the leap from cool to critical, every developer who has deployed a mission-critical application knows it is not enough just to write great code; to be truly useful, critical applications must be manageable as well. With the publishing of the JMX specification and the availability of multiple JMX implementations , Java programmers have a standard mechanism with which to instrument and manage their software products. This book will provide you with the information necessary to leverage JMX to create a new generation of better-instrumented, more manageable, and therefore more reliable mission-critical Java applications.

At the moment the two biggest growth areas for Java are enterprise and embedded systems. Tens of thousands of IT developers are now or soon will be using J2EE technologies to create mission-critical business systems. The major J2EE vendors , including IBM WebSphere and BEA WebLogic application servers, are using JMX to provide their own management, as well as to enable yours. The J2EE 1.4 standard is being extended to include management interfaces using JMX as defined by JSR (Java Specification Request) 77. At the other end of the spectrum, thousands more developers will be using Java to create embedded applications, from set-top boxes to remote pumping-station monitors .

It is essential that these applications, which run unattended on "invisible computers" for the most part, be as self-monitoring and self-managing as possible. JMX provides a substrate upon which to construct such self-monitoring/managing applications, and a copy of this book will substantially reduce your JMX learning curve.

JMX is also being accepted by the telephony industry as a management infrastructure for Java for the Advanced Intelligent Network (JAIN). As these specifications for the use of Java in telephony service environments emerge, whole new industries will need to become familiar with JMX. The probability that you will encounter JMX in one form or another, as part of your own designs or as the instrumentation mechanism for components of your infrastructure, is very high. This book will give you the foundation and technical details you need to make effective use of JMX wherever you find it.

Although it is well known that JMX is continuing to evolve , its basic architecture and interfaces will remain consistent. There is more to using JMX than understanding the architecture and interfaces; you also need to understand how it connects to management systems, the role it plays in the management industry, appropriate use of the technology, and management design patterns. In short, you need to understand how to create a manageable system.

This book has been written in a comprehensive manner by experts in that space. It also will give you an in-depth understanding of the application of JMX in hot technologies: J2EE and Web services. You will find this book to be useful long after new versions of JMX become available because the concepts introduced here are classic applications of management concepts and technologies to the Java family. This book will do more than help you write MBeans; it will help guide you build manageable systems.