JMX Jobs

Java Management Extension (JMX) technology is included in the Java Standard Edition (SE) platform, version 5 and higher. JMX lets you remotely access applications, using a Remote Method Invocation (RMI) connector, for monitoring and management purposes.

JMX jobs let you access a remote JMX server that advertises MBeans. An MBean is a managed bean (Java object) that represents an application, a device, or any resource that you want to manage. An MBean contains a set of attributes and a set of operations that can be invoked. Some MBeans can send out notifications, for example, when an attribute changes.

Note: To run these jobs, your system requires CA WA Agent for UNIX, Linux, or Windows and CA WA Agent for Application Services.

Consider an MBean named Config that represents an application's configuration. The configuration parameters within that application are represented in Config by a set of attributes. Getting the attribute named cachesize, for example, returns the current value of the cachesize. Setting the value updates the cachesize. The Config MBean can send out a notification every time the cachesize changes. An operation named update, for example, can save changes to the configuration parameters.

The following diagram shows the functional relationship between the scheduling manager, CA WA Agent for Application Services, and the JMX server:

This diagram shows the functional relationship between the scheduling manager, CA WA Agent for Application Services, and the JMX server.

The JMX jobs provide support for getting and setting JMX MBean attributes, invoking JMX MBean operations, subscribing to MBean notifications, and creating and removing instances of MBeans on a JMX server.

You can define the following six types of JMX jobs:

JMX-MBean Attribute Get
JMX-MBean Attribute Set
JMX-MBean Create Instance
JMX-MBean Operation
JMX-MBean Remove Instance
JMX-MBean Subscribe

The JMX-MBean Attribute Set, JMX-MBean Create Instance, and JMX-MBean Operation jobs support calls to MBeans that can involve passing parameters. Each parameter can be an actual value or a serialized Java object passed by another job. When the JMX-MBean Operation job invokes an operation on an MBean that passes parameters, the parameters are passed to the MBean and the returned serialized Java object is stored on the agent computer in the spool directory or in a destination file you specify.

To define JMX jobs, you require a URL to connect to the JMX server using an RMI connector.