Protocol Independence

The design of MBeans, agents, and managers does not depend in any way on the protocol an agent uses for communicating with external applications. All interactions with MBeans are necessarily handled by the MBean server and thus defined by the APIs of the Java Management extensions.

The provided connectors rely on this API and do not expose any communication details. A connector server-conector client pair may be replaced by another without loss of functionality, assuming both protocols are in the network environment. Applications may thus switch protocols according to real-time conditions. For example, if a manager must access an agent behind a firewall, it may instantiate and use an HTTP connector.

Because MBeans and agents are protocol-independent, they may be accessed simultaneously through any number of protocols. Connector servers and protocol adapters can handle multiple connections, so your agent only needs one of them for each protocol to which it would like to respond. The MBean server also supports simultaneous requests, although MBeans are responsible for their own sychronization issues.

New connectors for new protocols can be developed and used without rewriting existing MBeans or external applications. All that is required is that the new connector client expose the remote API.