2.2.5 J2EE management

The J2EE management specification dictates the existence of certain Managed Objects (MOs) that can be used to manage the available appserver resources. The specification does not require that managed objects be implemented by means of JMX MBeans, but the required interface makes MBeans a natural choice for MOs.

In WAS, the management standard MOs are essentially provided by mappings to existing WebSphere JMX MBeans. For example, the specification requires a J2EEServer managed object that is equivalent to the Server MBean in WebSphere. The management standard introduces a set of required key properties, part of a new ObjectName method, a number of attributes, and three optional interfaces: EventProvider, StateManageable, and StatisticsProvider. These required and optional parts have all been added to the relevant WebSphere MBeans (see the Information Center section Administrative programs for multiple Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition appservers for a detailed description of the available objects and attributes).

A major requirement by the standard that does not map into the existing WebSphere architecture is the ability to interoperate with management objects representing resources that have not been started in the WebSphere run time environment. Consequently, a proxy mechanism has been introduced that runs in every appserver in a stand-alone server environment, or as part of the deployment manager in a distributed server environment. With this proxy implementation, all the required managed objects, methods, and attributes can be interfaced regardless of whether the WebSphere JMX MBean is running or not.

Be aware that the J2EE management standard defines a common set of objects and operations for J2EE appservers and hence does not provide management capabilities for specific WAS features.

We recommend that WebSphere-only management clients operate directly on the WebSphere JMX MBeans to avoid the overhead of the proxy object and to take advantage of the full management capabilities of the WebSphere product.