25.2.1 Class of a Mirror MBean

Mirror MBeans are implemented as dynamic MBeans; they are instances of the CascadeGenericProxy class. The cascading service gives them the MBeanInfo object that they will expose and establishes their connection with the original MBean. The MBean information contains the class name of the original MBean, not their own class name. Exposing this borrowed class name guarantees that the cascading service is completely transparent.

The symmetry of the Java dynamic management architecture means that this cascading mechanism is scalable to any number of levels. The mirror object of a mirror object is again an instance of the CascadeGenericProxy class, and it borrows the same object name and class name. Any operation on the top mirror will be propagated to its subagent, where the intermediate mirror will send it its own subagent, and so forth. The cost of cascading is the cost of accessing the subagent: the depth of your cascading hierarchy should be adapted to your management solution.

Because the legacy cascading service MBean instantiates and controls all mirror MBeans, the CascadeGenericProxy class should never be instantiated through a management operation, nor by the code of the agent application. We have described it here only to provide an example application of dynamic MBeans.