1 Introduction and Roadmap

As an application developer, one can greatly reduce the cost of operating and maintaining your applications by building management facilities into your applications. The simplest facility is message logging, which reports events within your applications as they occur and writes messages to a file or other repository. Depending on the criticality of your application, the complexity of the production environment, and the types of monitoring systems your organization uses in its operations center, your needs might be better served by building richer management facilities based on Java Management Extensions (JMX). JMX enables a generic management system to monitor your application; raise notifications when the application needs attention; and change the configuration or runtime state of your application to remedy problems.

This document describes how to use JMX to make your applications manageable.

The following sections describe the contents and organization of this guide—Developing Manageable Applications with JMX.

Document Scope and Audience

This document is a resource for software developers who develop management services for Java EE applications. It also contains information that is useful for business analysts and system architects who are evaluating WebLogic Server or considering the use of JMX for a particular application.

It is assumed that the reader is familiar with Java EE and general application management concepts.

The information in this document is relevant during the design and development phases of a software project. This document does not address production phase administration, monitoring, or performance tuning topics. For links to WebLogic Server documentation and resources related to these topics, see Related Documentation.

This document emphasizes a hands-on approach to developing a limited but useful set of JMX management services. For information on applying JMX to a broader set of management problems, refer to the JMX specification or other documents listed in Related Documentation.

Guide to this Document

Related Documentation

The Oracle Technology Network includes a Web site that provides links to books, white papers, and additional information on JMX: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/tech/javamanagement-140525.html.

To view the JMX 1.2 specification, download it from http://jcp.org/aboutJava/communityprocess/final/jsr003/index3.html.

To view the JMX Remote API 1.0 specification, download it from http://jcp.org/aboutJava/communityprocess/final/jsr160/index.html.

You can view the API reference for the javax.management* packages from: http://download.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/overview-summary.html.

For guidelines on developing other types of management services for WebLogic Server applications, see the following documents:

For guidelines on developing and tuning WebLogic Server applications, see Developing Applications for Oracle WebLogic Server.

Samples for the JMX Developer

In addition to this document, Oracle provides two JMX code samples in the Avitek Medical Records Application (MedRec). MedRec is an end-to-end sample Java EE application shipped with WebLogic Server that simulates an independent, centralized medical record management system. The MedRec application provides a framework for patients, doctors, and administrators to manage patient data using a variety of different clients.

Note:

The WLS Code Examples and MedRec sample application are not installed by default. To install the code examples and MedRec, you must select a custom installation of WebLogic Server and select to install the Server Examples.

The JMX code in MedRec exemplifies the following management tasks:

  • Monitoring an application with JMX.

    One of the session EJBs in MedRec is instrumented for management through JMX. The EJB keeps track of how many times it writes to the database and exposes this counter as an MBean attribute.

  • Using JMX to extend a security realm.

    A JSP and supporting Java classes in the MedRec application invoke JMX APIs to add a new Administrator user to the MedRec security realm. The JSP provides the interface for collecting the new user information and the supporting classes validate the information and insert the new user into the realm.

For information about the JMX code examples in MedRec, do the following:

  1. Start MedRec server.

    MedRec can be started from the WL_HOME/samples/domains/medrec directory, where WL_HOME is the top-level installation directory for WebLogic Server. The administration username and password for the Medical Records domain is weblogic/weblogic.

  2. When MedRec server starts, it displays its home page in a Web browser. On the MedRec home page, click the More Samples link.

    MedRec displays the WebLogic Server Code Examples viewer.

  3. In the Code Examples viewer, in the left pane, do either of the following:

    • Expand Avitek Medical Records Sample Application > Features > JMX. Then select the Monitoring an Application with JMX topic.

    • Expand Avitek Medical Records Sample Application > Features > Security. Then select the Extending a Realm Using JMX topic.

New and Changed Features in This Release

For new and changed JMX features in this release, see "New and Changed Features in This Release" in Developing Custom Management Utilities With JMX for Oracle WebLogic Server.

For a comprehensive listing of the new WebLogic Server features introduced in this release, see What's New in Oracle WebLogic Server.