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The JMX APIs: An Easier Approach to Application Management, If You Avoid the Potholes: O'Reilly Releases "Java Management Extensions"

July 22, 2002

Sebastopol, CA--Happy Java enterprise developers are all alike; every unhappy Java enterprise developer is unhappy in his or her own way. However, quite often this unhappiness stems from the difficulty of managing increasingly complex enterprise applications and the questions developers face when grappling with this task: Which management solution is best for the application? What standards should a management solution follow? How much effort is required to enable the components of the application to be managed?

To deal with all these questions, Java Management Extensions, or JMX, was created. The result of the Java Community Process (JCP) Java Specification Request (JSR) 3, JMX was designed to address the management needs of applications written for the Java platform and to be compatible with existing management standards, such as SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol). But the JMX technology is new and complex, and according to J. Steven Perry, author of Java Management Extensions, (O'Reilly, US $34.95) still has a few "potholes" in it. Perry's book introduces developers to the JMX APIs, providing a complete treatment of the JMX architecture, (both the instrumentation level and the agent level). Says Perry, "I've read the JMX specification--so you don't have to--and have boiled it down into practical, hands-on advice for using JMX to manage and monitor your application."

Full of real-world examples for implementing management extensions, the book takes developers through JMX step-by-step, pointing out the "gotchas" before they have a chance to trip up smooth operation of the application. The book also contains useful higher-level information about JMX to help technical managers and architects who are evaluating various application management approaches and are considering using JMX. "Java Management Extensions" covers the following topics:

  • Standard MBeans
  • Dynamic MBeans
  • Model MBeans
  • Open MBeans
  • The Mbean server
  • The JMX notification model
  • Dynamic loading
  • Monitors
  • The timer service
  • The relation service

"JMX is an important step forward in managing Java, and more specifically J2EE, applications, and there is nothing else out there currently that covers the full specification and reference implementation," says Perry of his book. And Perry has spent his time in the trenches. "I've been paged at 3:00 am to provide support because the system wasn't doing what it should and no one had a clue how to figure out why. I've scrolled through endless log files to decipher system problems, when a management solution could have presented an operator with a warning message hours earlier!"

Written for developers, managers, and any other IT professionals interested in understanding JMX, "Java Management Extensions" offers both a "big picture" view and a how-to approach with concrete examples to help the reader implement the JMX APIs effectively from the start.

Additional resources:

Java Management Extensions
By J. Steven Perry
ISBN 0-596-00245-9, 300 pages, $34.95 (US), $54.95 (CAN)
order@oreilly.com
1-800-998-9938; 1-707-827-7000

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