1.3.3 Dynamic Extensibility and Scalability

By definition, all agents and manager applications developed with the Java DMK 5.1 are extensible and scalable. The library of agent services is always available. Managers can instantiate new services when needed and later remove them to minimize memory usage. This is especially useful for running agents on small footprint devices.

In the same way, MBeans can be registered and be unregistered with the MBean server in an agent while the agent is running. This is useful to represent application resources that can come and go on a given host. The scalability enables an agent to adapt to the size and complexity of its managed resources, without having to be restarted or be reinstalled.

The dynamic loading service can download and instantiate MBeans from an arbitrary location. Therefore, you can extend the functionality of a running agent by making new classes available at an arbitrary location and requesting that the agent load and instantiate them. This is effectively a push mechanism that can be used to deploy services and applications to customers.

In addition, open MBeans contribute to the flexibility and scalability of management systems by enabling management applications to use new managed objects as the objects are created.

Finally, conformance to the JMX specification ensures that all components that are compatible with the JMX specification can be incorporated into Java dynamic management agents, whether they are manageable resources, new services, or new communication components.