[Openjmx-users] can't see the jmx forest for the trees

[Mark D. A. <md...@di...>]

(this same message is being sent to both ope...@li...
and to the jbossmx forum at http://main.jboss.org/forum.jsp?forum=63 )

i've now perused these sites:
JMX http://java.sun.com/products/JavaManagement/
JDMK http://www.sun.com/software/java-dynamic/
OpenJMX http://openjmx.sourceforge.net/
JBossMX http://www.jboss.org/developers/jboss-jbossmx.jsp
It also seems that some of the commercial J2EE vendors (bea) and Corba vendors (iona)
and snmp vendors (AdventNet) have things to say about JMX.

i've read the instrumentation specification, and though it has every sign
of design by committee (disagreement? let's just do all the choices),
i kind of get it.

so let's assume i manage to instrument my code.

Now, how do I get to manage it?
None of the JDMK, JBossMX, or OpenJMX have much to say, if anything,
about the other two projects, so I can't figure out how much there is overlap.
Are either of the open source projects trying  to independently develop the JMX portion,
or just the JDMK portion? Or something else?

Suppose I have a server of my own devising, and no EJB in sight.
In particular, i am not using a J2EE container such as jboss.
I've instrumented my code to be manageable as one of the many flavors of JMX beans.

1. Suppose i want to be able to manage it over an http connection, connecting
to a special thread in my own server that just does deals with that management
connection. It would appear that JDMK has something like that, and it seems
JBossMX has an HtmlAdapterServer.
I don't know how many different jars I'd have to find an link in.
Nor do I know what extra APIs I'd have to call to get that service thread started.

2. Now suppose that I'd like to write my own management interface using JSP, talking
to some api (which one?), to manage my own beans. What jars would I want for that?

3. Now suppose I'd like to manage those instrumented beans using SNMP.
It appears JDMK does that; I don't know what else does.

Right now, I'm caught between the marketing verbiage of Sun, and the 
nothing-but-javadoc of the open source projects, and can't figure out how
to do those basic and fundamental 3 things.

Maybe I'm missing some faq or howto somewhere?

I'm sorely tempted to just bag the whole thing, and instrument my code instead
with some open source java snmp implementation.
At least then it is well understood and documented territory.

-mda