The Complete Operas of Puccini: A Critical Guide (Da Capo Paperback)

Book Description

Steve Perry has spent his time "in the trenches". "I've been paged at 3:00 am to provide support because the system wasn't doing what it should and no one had a clue how to figure out why. I've scrolled through endless logfiles to decipher system problems, when a management solution could have presented an operator with a warning message hours earlier!" Wanting other developers to be able to learn from his experiences, Steve wrote Java Management Extensions. Java Management Extensions is a practical, hands-on guide to using the JMX APIs, Sun Microsystem's new Java-based tool for managing enterprise applications. This one-of-a kind book is a complete treatment of the JMX architecture (both the instrumentation level and the agent level), and it's loaded with real-world examples for implementing Management Extensions. It also contains useful information at the higher level about JMX (the "big picture") to help technical managers and architects who are evaluating various application management approaches and are considering JMX. The JMX technology is very new, and according to Steve, still has a few "potholes" in it. This book takes developers through it step by step, pointing out the "gotchas" before they have a chance to trip up smooth operation of the application. The author, a member of the expert group developing the JMX specification, points out that as J2EE becomes more widely adopted, the Java standard for management (JMX) becomes more and more crucial to avoid "splinter standards" where each vendor has their own distinct, arguably successful, way of doing things. "In my own company we have already identified and are tackling the problem of managing our Java applications. It's my belief that other companies will follow, as they come to realize the power that a standard manageability solution (ie, JMX) gives them." The book is divided into the following sections:

Introduction and overview
the JMX Instrumentation Level
Standard MBeans
Dynamic MBeans
Model Mbeans
The JMX Agent Level
The Mbean Server
The JMX Notification Model
Dynamic Loading
Monitors
Timer Services
Relation Services
Related Technologies

Customer Reviews:

Good, but a bit dated at this point........2007-01-26

If you're looking for an introduction to JMX, this book gives good coverage of the concepts and techniques behind instrumenting your applications. However, if you're looking for information on the latest and greatest in JMX, especially anything related to JMX remoting, then you should look somewhere else. This book was written in 2002, before J2SE 5.0, and a lot has happened to JMX since then. Starting with J2SE 5.0, JMX is a core part of the Java standard library and the JDK ships with a highly usable remote management application called jconsole.

avoid - it's now obsolete.......2006-06-21

It has been 4 years since this book came out. Despite the many high hopes in the computer industry in 2002, JMX has run out of conceptual steam. You can't tell that from the text. But since then, Service Oriented Architecture and Web Services have garnered far more mindshare.

The text also does not indicate that JMX simply proved too hard in practice, as a useful management tool or console. If you read the book and try its recommendations, you are walking into a dead end. There will be very little interest by others in what you program.

Java Management Extensions.......2004-04-03

JMX is a Java framework for managing enterprise applications in a distributed environment. The book Java Management Extensions takes the reader from a high-level mountaintop description of what JMX is in the first chapter, aimed at architects and management, who might be investigating the new technology, to a trench-digging description of how to expose a class for management through instrumenting an MBean.

Perry's initial description of the JMX architecture in the first chapter does a good job describing the parts of the JMX and how they interoperate. It is a very high-level view of JMX and many abstract ideas are presented. On a personal level, my experience with the JBoss application server gave me a concrete example to refer to during this JMX introduction, which helped. Here, the reader is presented with many UML diagrams to illustrate the architecture.

The next four chapters cover the nuts and bolts of how to construct JMX services. To use the JMX framework, a developer must become familiar with an object called an MBean. In a nutshell, MBeans are Java classes that implement an MBean interface (A process known as instrumenting), allowing the MBeans to be loaded into an MBean server and managed. In these chapters, Perry talks about four types of Mbeans, Standard, Dynamic, Model, and Open MBeans. After introducing each type of MBean, Perry gives simple code examples of how to build each type of MBean.

Chapter 6 deals primarily with introducing the reader to the MBean server. Perry uses the reference implementation from Sun for the examples in his book. Real world MBean servers include names such as JBoss and WebLogic. The most exciting part of the book, I felt were chapters 7 and 9, where Perry talks about the JMX notification model and Monitoring classes. Firing events, filtering notifications, and creating monitors appear to be the real advantages to the JMX framework and are covered thoroughly in these chapters.

Perry's no-nonsense writing style provides a succinct description of the architecture. At 312 pages, the book is the thinnest technical book on my bookshelf, making the read easier to manage.

In summary, Java Management Extensions is a good book for developers who want to gain an understanding of what JMX is. Programmers new to JMX will probably find the first part of the book a good introduction to JMX and its architecture, while the last chapters focus more on how to put the framework to good use. Although Perry does not have a style of writing that entertained me, it was clear and to the point. He does cover his information thoroughly and appears to know the content well. JMX is a technology that I feel will be used heavily in the future, and for anyone who is intending to write a J2EE application that needs management or monitoring, JMX appears to be the answer.

Good coverage of JMX basics but not much on practicle usage.......2003-02-13

This book covers the fundamentals of JMX but where I was disappointed was that it uses a pretty basic queue example and doesn't really get into J2EE applications and praticle uses. I was left wondering when to use it. If I had it to do over I'd choose another book with more praticle applications for JMX.

An exceptionally useful and straightforward manual.......2002-10-08

Java Management Extensions by Java expert J. Steven Perry is a superbly organized and written reference and instructional resource to managing Java applications with JMX. Individual chapters address standard, dynamic, model, and open MBeans, dynamic loading, the monitoring class and timer service, and much more. A practical study of JMX architecture as well as a thoroughly "user friendly" how-to guide for technical managers, Java Management Extensions is an exceptionally useful and straightforward manual.

Jmx: Managing J2ee Applications with Java Management Extensions

Average customer rating:

obsolete - avoid
Not bad but first look at the Sun tutorial.
Excellent Book, but not for beginners
JMX Managing J2EE with Java Management Extensions
OK Coverage for an Emerging Standard

Jmx: Managing J2ee Applications with Java Management Extensions
Marc Fleury , Juha Lindfors , and The JBoss Group
Manufacturer: Sams
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0672322889

Book Description

JMX begins by presenting the JMX specification and its architecture. The book quickly moves through the specification, offering examples of JMX integration with J2EE applications. The final section of the book presents JMX management and administration practices for a variety of J2EE platforms and scenarios.

Customer Reviews:

obsolete - avoid.......2006-06-21

While JBoss has been successful in various aspects of its operations, this book by them is now obsolete. The industry has largely moved away from JMX. The book was written at a time when JMX seemed like the Next Big Thing. Alas, the book does not indicate that in practice, JMX proved too intricate. Since then, Web Services and Service Oriented Architecture have become more popular choices, for building dispersed applications.

Not bad but first look at the Sun tutorial........2004-04-23

First reading this book and then the JDMK 5.0 Tutorial from Sun I was struck by how much of it is copied from the tutorial. The tutorial seems very well written and complete, and I would recomend it before this book.

Excellent Book, but not for beginners.......2002-12-07

Although the contents in the books are a little haphazard and the samples don't run out of the box, its has excellent content.
This is definately not an intro to JMX if you're not ready to poke around.
Interestingly the difficulty in running the samples and the poking around ultimately led me to get a much deeper understanding of the JMX concept.
Its sort of like how you remember the directions well after you've been lost a few times and havinng to figure your way out of it.
If you use open source software and are used to poking around to troubleshoot its an excellent book. Just don't except too much handholding.
Thanks guys for introducing me to the fascinating world of loosely coupled systems based on JMX and dynamic proxies!!

JMX Managing J2EE with Java Management Extensions.......2002-11-23

The example code, ...doesn't match the examples in the book. The files are all in a single directory instead of being seperated by chapter. This makes it more difficult to work with.

Some of the examples will no longer compile due to changes in the JMX spec. There's no errata files.

Other than the difficulty of the examples, the book provides a good introduction to JMX.

OK Coverage for an Emerging Standard.......2002-04-27

This book will be of particular interest to you if you're using JBoss as your app server, as JMX forms the fundamental glue used to implement the JBoss server.

The book starts out with some nice introductory coverage for Standard MBeans, which are about the most dirt simple classes to code so I expected some good writing here. From there we start getting into Dynamic MBeans where the fun really begins. I was particularly interested in the implementation of ModelMBeans, which are dynamic MBeans that can map to a resource (like a printer for example) and provide automated attribute caching etc.

While the Dynamic MBean coverage was fairly adequate I was pretty disappointed with the ModelMBean coverage. Not enough time was spent describing all the Info classes and Descriptor attributes you need to implement. I spent a lot of time experimenting, reading the JSRs, and working through a subsequent ModelMBean implementation chapter to figure things out. There are also numerous bugs in the sample code for ModelMBeans.

The Chapter discussing the MBeanServer was a little light but reasonably well done. Enough to help you understand how it works which is all you need to program with anyway.

One sorely lacking area is JMX notifications. The interfaces are briefly mentioned, but there is little by way of sample code, or in depth discussion of the default JMX notifications. Since notifications are based on the AWT Event model you can find plenty of other source material for how the notification mechanism works, but I'd like to see more detail on the JMX standard messages etc.

I enjoyed the JMX standard services section. They were very instructive, and helped indirectly patch together some of the notifcication stuff.

The JBoss chapter is, of course, quite good with detailed information about how JBoss uses JMX, how everything fits together in JBoss with JMX. All in all it's a great case study of what you might do with JMX.

This book was a good introduction to JMX, but I felt it lacking in certain areas of detail. Since there are relatively few JMX books (in fact I think this might be the only one) it's not a waste of money, just not as insghtful as I'd hoped.

Average customer rating:

Poorly written

Offers many new ideas

Not a very good or original book

competes with BPEL/WSDL

Not for newbies

Pro JMX Java Management Extensions
J. Jeffrey Hanson , and Jeff Hanson
Manufacturer: Apress
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Java Management Extensions

JMX in Action

Java Concurrency in Practice

ASIN: 1590591011

Book Description

Pro JMX: Java Management Extensions discusses the complete JMX architecture including the JMX Remoting 1.2 release. Offered are leading-edge examples of JMX integration with distributed applications, including sequence diagrams and sample code. The book takes a top down approach; starting from the highest level of detail and drilling down to expose the lowest level of details. The book presents the JMX architecture as a pluggable, services-oriented framework. This includes discussing how JMX allows you to dynamically add, remove and modify services at run-time. The book provides in-depth discussions of JMX notifications, event models and messages. The book finished up with real-world examples of JMX in use. This includes discussions of how JMX is integrated with different management systems and how JMX is used to expose these systems to the J2EE environment.

Download Description

Pro JMX: Java Management Extensions discusses the complete JMX architecture including the JMX Remoting 1.2 release. Offered are leading edge examples of JMX integration with distributed applications, including sequence diagrams and sample code. The book takes a top-down approach; starting from the highest level of detail and drilling down to expose the lowest level of details.

Jeff Hanson presents the JMX architecture as a pluggable, services-oriented framework, including how JMX allows you to dynamically add, remove, and modify services at run-time. Hanson also provides in-depth discussions of JMX notifications, event models, and messages.

Hanson wraps up the book with real-world examples of JMX in use. This includes discussions of how JMX is integrated with different management systems and how JMX is used to expose these systems to the J2EE environment.

Customer Reviews:

Poorly written.......2006-08-27

The main problem with this books is its lack of concepts.
It tries to delve direcly into code. But then the code is also very poorly written. None of the code is written to explain the concept.
It feels more like the author cut pasted it from somewhere else.
Some of the concepts - like relationships and roles - leave one wondering with the question, whether the author himself has understood them properly.

Offers many new ideas.......2006-02-09

The author looks at JMX from the perspective of IT operations management as well as software developerment. The chapter covering the history of management specifications and technologies makes this book worth the price just on those merits alone.

Not a very good or original book.......2005-01-14

This book does not offer many original or insightful ideas about JMX. In fact, a good portion of the book is copied and pasted from the JSR-160 specification. I recommend downloading that and reading it if you're interested in JMX Remoting. The best book on JMX (although a bit dated) is still by Fleury & Lindfors.

competes with BPEL/WSDL.......2004-12-24

A few years ago, JMX emerged as a bright new idea in the Java world. It was crafted as a 3 level structure, as Hanson explains. The lowest being the instrumentation, populated with MBeans that map to resources of some kind, hardware or software. Above these is the agent level and then distributed services.

The book goes into lots of detail about how to fill these levels. So that distributed systems might be made that control resources scattered across the Internet. All this has given rise to startups, often of a very specialised nature, like Intersperse, that make such applications.

However, it's been over a year since this book came out. A countervailing trend seems to have emerged. As Web Services have been studied, the Web Services Description Language was made and its limitations discovered. So Business Process Execution Language has recently arisen to describe business logic, controlling loosely coupled distributed Web Services. So there is competition between JMX and BPEL/WSDL, with the latter nudging ahead. Yes, there are differences in scope. But they overlap enough in the crucial idea of distributed business logic.

So consider whether you want to go ahead with this book or try BPEL/WSDL.

Not for newbies.......2004-05-13

I wasn't completely new to JMX when I picked up this book. Yet, I felt uncomfortable with how fast the author dove into details that would be relevant to someone who's about to write a JMX implementation, not to a regular user of the technology.

The book's structure is also a bit inconsistent, in my opinion. For example, the author jumps into describing the history and patterns of distributed management system design in chapter 5 -- after two introductory chapters and two very code-focused chapters.

As an advanced manual to itty bitty details of how connectors etc. are implemented, this book is excellent. It's too bad that the back cover doesn't give any indication of this focus. If you're looking for a guide to learn or "just" use JMX, I'd suggest looking elsewhere.

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