Java Management Extensions (JMX) is the management standard both in J2EE and J2SE. Because JMX greatly simplifies the instrumentation of resources and remote access to them, it is becoming the de facto standard for Java application and services management. Java 5.0 (http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/index.jsp) includes the JMX 1.2 specification together with the remote API, as well as virtual-machine-level instrumentation that enables off-the-shelf virtual-machine (VM) monitoring and management. Moreover, JMX management capabilities can be leveraged by using a number of open-source tools that provide management consoles and communications infrastructure. You can use JMX in Java 5.0 VMs with different communication connectors and adapters to provide a multiprotocol view of your applications and harness the benefit from the existing consoles to monitor and control your applications, services, and resources in production environments.

In this article, we build on "Java Management Extensions" by Paul Tremblett (DDJ, July 2004), which focused on how to set up a management agent and use an HTTP adapter to remotely interact with it. We complement that article by showing how you can access MBeans from your own code. Additionally, we provide an in-depth view of Java's management technology, and describe the monitoring and management information included in Java 5.0.