IN THIS APPENDIX
The JBossMX project is a work-in-progress JMX implementation for the JBoss application server. The goal of JBossMX is to provide a standards-compliant JMX implementation that acts as the core of the JBoss application server microkernel architecture. The JBossMX is optimized for speed in the MBean server invocation bus and supports many of the advanced features mentioned in this book.
The core of the JBossMX implementation is based on many parts on the code you have read about and studied in this book. In addition, the JBossMX project will further extend the implementation with features such as security, transactions, MBean server federation, and MBean fail-over.
To find out more about JBossMX and to see the code level details of advanced JMX implementations, point your Web browser to http://www.jboss.org/developers/jboss-jbossmx.jsp.
Feel free to join the JBoss team with your ideas, input, and code(!). The discussion forums for JBossMX are available at http://www.jboss.org/forums/index.jsp.
In addition to the base JMX implementation, the JBossMX will implement many of the more advanced features mentioned in the book. These features cover all the levels of the JMX management architecture—instrumentation, agent, and distributed services level.
The agent implementation will support security for all MBean invocations through invocation interceptors. The interceptors are pluggable and can be configured to include security, logging, and transaction demarcation for all MBeans. In addition, the MBean server methods for MBean creation, registration, and unregistration can be restricted via security interceptors.
The agent level will also support advanced class loaders developed as part of the JBoss project. The advanced class loading mechanism will allow you to easily deploy different versions of the same component, reload new Java class versions based on scope, and delegate class loading between several loaders to avoid class loading conflicts between different loaders.
The JBossMX MBean server will be in a critical location in the application server invocation path. Consequently, the server invocation mechanism will be optimized for speed and scalability. In addition, a federation of MBean servers will be supported to form an MBean view that spans across several servers and will be the base for handling clustered resources.
The JBossMX server will allow interceptors with security, transaction, and logging functionality to be added for all MBean types. Also, the Model MBean implementation in this book is extended with component configurable interceptors, different kinds of persistence mechanisms (transactional persistence through existing persistence components, such as EJB entities), different forms of metadata generation, and other features.
The connector implementation you studied in Chapter 9, “Connectors and Protocol Adaptors,” and Chapter 10, “JMX Distribution Layer with J2EE Services,” will be extended to support secure communication between the management application and the MBean server. The connector proxies will support fail-over behavior for MBean resources and support remote notifications.
The HTTP adaptor implementation will support Model MBeans with the capability of investigating the management interface descriptors (such as the presentation string) and adjust itself accordingly. Also, the possibility to expose the MBeans as Web Services through a WSDL adaptor in cooperation with the JBoss.NET project will be investigated.
The JBossMX project is a JMX implementation for the JBoss application server and should adapt to all the requirements demanded by a high-performance, distributed platform. This provides interesting possibilities to investigate the internal design and implementation of a JMX server and components. As JBoss is a free, open-source project, anyone is welcome to participate. We hope to see you on the forums soon!