Key Properties

A key is a property-value pair that can also have any meaning that you assign to it. An object name must have at least one key. Keys and their values are independent of the MBean's attributes: the object name is a static identifier which should identify the MBean, whereas attributes are the exposed, runtime values of the corresponding resource. Keys are not positional and can be given in any order to identify an MBean.

Keys usually provide the specificity for identifying a unique MBean instance. For example, a better object name for the HTML protocol adaptor MBean might be: Communications:protocol=html,port=8082, assuming the port will not change.