Resource management and JMX - JMX in Action - page 16

Figure 1.2 An environment with many applications that need management. Each is
represented by its own MBean and managed through a single management tool using any
number of protocols or transports. The three JMX layers are delimited by dotted lines.

The following sections highlight the layers of the JMX architecture by discussing
what takes place at each step in this use case. The first layer used in the use case
is the distributed layer.

1.3.2 The distributed layer

The distributed layer is the outermost layer of the JMX architecture. This layer
is responsible for making JMX agents available to the outside world. There are
two kinds of distributed interaction. The first type is achieved by using objects
called adapters , which provide visibility to MBeans via different protocols such as
HTTP and SNMP . Second, JMX agents have components called connectors that
expose the agent API to other distributed technologies such as Java RMI . In fact,
as figure 1.3 shows, an agent can work with many different technologies. Adapt-
ers and connectors provide the same functionality in a JMX environment. They
are broken into two groups (adapters and connectors) at the time we're writing
this topic, but plans call for them to be labeled as JMX adapters in the next
release of JMX .