5.3 Agent Application

The base agent is a standalone application with a main method, but it also has a constructor so that it can be instantiated dynamically by another class.

Example 5–1 Constructor for the Base Agent

public BaseAgent() {

    echo("\n\tInstantiating the MBean server of this agent...");
    mbs = MBeanServerFactory.createMBeanServer();

    // Retrieves ID of the MBean server from
    // the associated MBean server delegate
    //
    echo("\n\tGetting the ID of the MBean server from the " +
             "associated MBean server delegate ...");
    try {
         echo("\tID = " +
             mbs.getAttribute(new ObjectName(ServiceName.DELEGATE),
                              "MBeanServerId"));
    } catch (Exception e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
        System.exit(1);
    }

The MBean server is created through the static MBeanServerFactory object, and we store its object reference. Its true type is hidden by the factory object, that casts the returned object as an MBeanServer interface. The MBean server is the only functional class referenced directly in this application.

After the MBean server is initialized, we will create three communication MBeans.