2.1.1 DynamicMBean Interface

The DynamicMBean class is a Java interface defined by the Java Management Extensions (JMX) specification. It specifies the methods that a resource implemented as a dynamic MBean must provide to expose its management interface. Example 2–1 shows the uncommented code for the DynamicMBean interface.

Example 2–1 The DynamicMBean Interface

public class SimpleDynamic
    extends NotificationBroadcasterSupport
    implements DynamicMBean {

[...]

    public MBeanInfo getMBeanInfo() {

        return dMBeanInfo;
    }

The getMBeanInfo method provides a description of the MBean's management interface. This method returns an dMBeanInfo object that contains the metadata information about attributes and operations.

The attribute getters and setters are generic, since they take the name of the attribute that needs to be read or written. For convenience, dynamic MBeans must also define bulk getters and setters to operate on any number of attributes at once. These methods use the Attribute and AttributeList classes to represent attribute name-value pairs and lists of name-value pairs, respectively.

Because the names of the attributes are not revealed until runtime, the getters and setters are necessarily generic. In the same way, the invoke method takes the name of an operation and its signature, in order to invoke any method that might be exposed.

As a consequence of implementing generic getters, setters, and invokers, the code for a dynamic MBean is more complex than for a standard MBean. For example, instead of calling a specific getter by name, the generic getter must verify the attribute name and then encode the functionality to read each of the possible attributes.