Mainsoft’s president and CEO Yaacov Cohen said on the company’s website that the MainWin for J2EE, Portal Edition product “takes .NET-WebSphere integration to the next level, offering end users a single point of customizable access to both .NET and Java portlets.”

The technology lets .NET developers rapidly deploy ASP.NET applications as pure JSR 168 portlets. That gives the portal environment access to both Java and ASP.NET applications.

By extending WebSphere Portal’s capabilities to ASP.NET, programmers can craft applications in Java, C#, or VB.NET. Then, application users can access the various applications through portal with a single-sign-on process.

The security model means the portlets created in MainWin can access the authentication and credential vault in WebSphere.

It reduces the number of intrusion points available to an external attacker that could be present in a mix of security solutions.

MainWin should help bring .NET developers into a WebSphere programming environment more quickly.

Developers would not have to learn a new IDE or rewrite .NET code in Java before being able to redeploy it to the Portal.

From their environments, ASP.NET developers can invoke both the JSR 168 and IBM Portal APIs when building applications. And, .NET programmers can invoke Java class libraries and Enterprise JavaBeans methods within their application.

The MainWin for J2EE tool is intended for shops shifting from ASP.NET on Windows machines to WebSphere on Linux boxes.

Mainsoft looks like it is targeting those shops that are cost-sensitive enough to make that kind of switch with the minimum amount of disruption to their development efforts.

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It’s either a brilliant idea or it isn’t. Detractors see no difference between so-called 1.0 and 2.0 versions of SOA. Advocates like Oracle believe the difference is quite noticeable.

During the JavaOne Conference, Oracle executive Thomas Kurian, Senior VP for server technologies, discussed the future of Oracle and its next-generation application platform.

A report by Search Web Services showed how J2EE will figure in the SOA 2.0 world. Kurian contended that developers would adopt the latest version of J2EE, which will make it easier for them to build interfaces for underlying applications.

“We see a new application development framework emerging,” he said at the conference. Interfaces for those applications would be constructed using Java Server Faces technology.

The Fusion and J2EE framework behind SOA 2.0 would be an event-driven architecture instead of the conventional client/server methods employed in the present implementations of SOA. Some don’t see the big deal.

Joe McKendrick of ZDNet noted how JBoss director of standards Mark Little derided the proposal:

Oracle seems to be hedging its bets too. InfoWorld reported how Oracle is playing it safe when it comes to development:

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First of all JDeveloper 10G is targeted toward rapid web application building, utilizing all the achievements of the J2EE World: web service, EJB, MVC frameworks, XML, etc. Oracle JDeveloper 10G allows you to conduct all full development cycles for complex systems – from UML diagram-based concepts to debugging, profiling and deployment.

Let’s look at the product main features:

1. Cross-platform (works under main Unix/Linux platforms and in Microsoft Windows environment) friendly development environment with a high level of integration and third party plug-ins switching on. Syntax highlighting, re-factoring, transparent work with RDBMS, bi-directional code generation between UML models, EJB models, required J2EE patterns generation with one click of the button, visual web application builders and other capabilities open the doors for developer, who had never before being dreaming to create industrial-strength J2EE application!

2. PL/SQL stored procedures development and testing, plus integration with major database platforms – Oracle, Sybase, MS SQL Server etc. via JDBC mechanism.

3. Deployment capability for all major application servers – Oracle Application Server, IBM WebSphere, BEA WebLogic, JBoss. OC4J – J2EE container comes with this environment, which perfectly fits for application development and testing.

4. Oracle JDeveloper 10G provides the possibility to realize persistent layers for applications on the ADF component base, EJB components or O/R Mapper – TopLink, which is also included.

5. Team Development feature with interoperability with major VCS systems – CVS, Rational ClearCase, Oracle SCM

6. Oracle JDeveloper 10G’s unique feature is utilization of Oracle ADF (Application Developer Framework) – MVC realization, enabling rapid J2EE application development. View Layer makes it possible to build applications for data exposure as for thin clients, based on web browser viewing, as well as for rich client and even wireless. Controller Layer is built on Jakarta Apache project platform – popular Open Source framework Struts. Business Components Layer may be realized with various technologies – Java POJO, Oracle ADF Components, WebServices, EJB or Oracle TopLink Objects

7. At this moment (December 2004) Oracle is testing a new version – Oracle JDeveloper 10g (10.1.3) Developer Preview. The new features of this new version will be a completely redesigned user interface, additional re-factoring capabilities, advanced UML diagrams features, web services simplified creation, support for the web application building on Java Server Faces base, complete support for J2EE 1.4 specification, ADF Faces – JSF components and others.

8. You can get production and developer previews for Oracle JDeveloper 10G here http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/jdev/index.html

Boris Makushkin is senior software developer in Alba Spectrum Technologies US nation-wide Great Plains, Microsoft CRM customization company, based in Chicago and having locations in multiple states and internationally (www.albaspectrum.com ), he is Unix, SQL, C#.Net, Crystal Reports, Microsoft CRM SDK and Exchange Server SDK developer. You can reach Boris: borism@albaspectrum.com

iWay Software released its implementation for version 1.5 of the Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) Connector Architecture (JCA). JCA is a component of J2EE that provides the standard mechanism for integrating enterprise Java applications with packaged applications, legacy mainframe applications, and other mission-critical enterprise systems. iWay Software’s JCA 1.5 implementation is the industry’s first resource adapter for the new specification and enables the codeless creation of reusable interfaces to more than 250 enterprise information systems that will work on any J2EE 1.4 compliant application server.

JCA 1.5 is a significant upgrade, standardizing critical pieces of adapter functionality that were not present in the JCA 1.0 specification. These absences lead to differing JCA container implementations by the J2EE application server vendors, which in turn challenged the write once, run anywhere promise of Java and J2EE.

iWay Software’s support for JCA 1.5 means that its customers can preserve their mission critical software investments while not getting locked into their current application infrastructure decisions. Through tight partnerships, testing has been performed with leading J2EE Application Server vendors who have an available J2EE 1.4 implementation.

“iWay has architected its Universal Adapter Framework to enable any service to be used over any channel, now including JCA 1.5,” remarked iWay Software President John Senor. “This loosely coupled architecture enables maximum reuse and flexibility for our customers and at the same time shows our dedication to the J2EE marketplace.”

iWay Software’s JCA 1.5 capabilities are the latest deployment option for interfaces created with its Universal Adapter Framework. The iWay Universal Adapter Framework enables the creation of truly reusable services from over 250 enterprise information systems. While services created through the Universal Adapter Framework can now be deployed to a JCA 1.5 container, these same services can be easily deployed through other channels such as Web services, EDIINT, ebXML, XML/JMS, and many more standard and custom channels.

JavaProNews provides articles, solutions, and practical examples for anyone programming in Java.

As a result, quality assurance (QA) departments no longer have to laboriously compare the output of cumbersome profiling and development tools to understand the performance improvements offered by new application components.

Tonic’s innovative approach to transaction tracing management has been shown to dramatically reduce the time needed to move new application versions from QA into production. In addition, it reduces the amount of monitoring data presented to QA by highlighting the significant performance differences between transaction runs. WebLens 3.3.1 includes further improvements in performance and a reduction in overhead, which are specifically designed for the extreme transaction volumes found in QA departments.

“Customers are continuously looking to reduce the time it takes to move their new applications from QA into production, and Tonic is committed to providing the performance management tools needed to help in this process,” said Don Pate, CEO of Tonic Software. “The combination of low overhead, ‘on-demand’ deep transaction tracing, and comparative J2EE/.Net transaction reporting empowers our customers to focus on managing their business applications, not managing their management tools.”

The latest releases of WebLens also adds full support for the IBM SuSE Linux operating system to complement existing support for IBM AIX, Sun Solaris, RedHat Linux and Windows platforms; and for IBM WebSphere and BEA WebLogic application servers.

Pricing and Availability

WebLens 3.3.1 for J2EE and WebLens 3.3.1 for Microsoft .NET environments are currently available. The list price for WebLens turn key solutions start at $35,000.

JavaProNews provides articles, solutions, and practical examples for anyone programming in Java.

JBoss and the Eclipse Foundation today announced that JBoss has become a member of the Eclipse Foundation and will contribute code toward the J2EE Standard Tools Project. By working together, the two will combine their expertise to provide a more complete and tightly integrated open source tools and middleware solution.

Eclipse is an award-winning universal platform for application development tools integration, software modeling and testing that has been broadly adopted by commercial vendors, academic institutions and open technology developers.

JBoss provides the industry’s most widely used open source J2EE application server and a range of related open source middleware technologies and products. Additionally, it offers the JBoss-IDE, an open source integrated development environment that is used with Eclipse. Many developers use the JBoss-IDE and Eclipse to debug, monitor and control JBoss servers; use XDoclet; and aid in J2EE development of EJBs, servlets and Web services.

“Our objective in joining the Eclipse Foundation, one of the most respected and active open source organizations, is to contribute code that we believe will make it easier for developers to work with JBoss,” said Bob Bickel, vice president of strategy and corporate development, JBoss, Inc. “We anticipate our first major contribution will be a plug-in that will provide developers with a Java-based, aspect oriented framework that will be of use in any programming environment.”

Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation, said, “By working with Eclipse to provide better development tools, JBoss will ultimately help developers build better, easier to use middleware. Eclipse is already in widespread use among companies working with the JBoss Application Server. Now, by formalizing our relationship, the Eclipse Foundation and JBoss will be able to provide developers with an even more complete solution.”

Ashish Larivee, director of product marketing for exteNd and Nsure at Novell, a JBoss Authorized Service Partner and Eclipse Foundation member, commented, “Novell is committed to Eclipse as the common development environment across Novell products, and we believe that JBoss has a unique opportunity to provide leadership to the Eclipse community. We look forward to working together to drive the adoption of J2EE applications on Linux and open source.”

JavaProNews provides articles, solutions, and practical examples for anyone programming in Java.

Oracle announced that customers throughout the world are leveraging the advanced integration and J2EE capabilities of Oracle Application Server to integrate disparate applications and deploy Java applications. With Oracle Application Server, these companies are optimizing business processes while reducing costs.

Oracle Application Server 10g, the industry’s leading platform for Service-Oriented Architecture and Enterprise Integration provides a comprehensive and integrated Application Platform Suite with solutions for J2EE Applications, Web Services, BPEL-based Business Process Management, Data Integration and Customer Data Hubs, Enterprise Application Integration, and Business-to-Business Integration solutions. These capabilities can also be leveraged in Enterprise Portals, Business Intelligence, and Mobile Applications.

“Service-Oriented Architecture, J2EE and BPEL provide a much simpler, more productive, and 100 percent standards-based infrastructure to integrate enterprise applications, legacy systems, and business processes within organizations,” said Thomas Kurian, senior vice-president, Oracle Server Technologies, Oracle Corp. “Oracle Application Server 10g’s industry leading Enterprise Integration functionality is being rapidly adopted by leading customers around the world to make themselves more efficient, get better information, and leverage their existing technology investments.”

Worldwide Customers Cite Integration and J2EE Capabilities

Customers spanning several regions and industries are touting integration and J2EE capabilities as key benefits of Oracle Application Server.

Ordnance Survey:

An important government agency in the UK, Ordnance Survey produces computer data products and paper maps for business, leisure, administrative and educational use. Independent estimates suggest that Ordnance Survey data now underpins more than #100 billion (about $179 billion U.S.) worth of economic activity in Britain every year. It has two critical Web-based applications, Options and Geospatial Management System, which hold continuously changing information that was previously hosted from a network of survey outlets and local offices. To keep this information current and effective, these two applications were integrated and the vital data was migrated to Oracle Application Server 10g’s single runtime repository.

“Scalability is key to Options. With more and more users coming on board, we need an environment which is robust, easy to scale and most importantly, easy to maintain. Oracle Application Server 10g offers all of these,” said Kishore Chekuri, principal consultant, Ordnance Survey. “It provided the required infrastructure to tightly integrate with our back-end and legacy systems with ease.”

Yarra Valley Water (YVW):

Yarra Valley Water (YVW), the largest Victorian Metropolitan Retail Water Utility in Australia, services 1.6 million people who live and work in the Yarra River catchment area of Melbourne. YVW recently went live with Oracle Application Server to integrate three key systems and introduce enhanced end user reporting. The first phase in the integration rollout integrates the Asset InformationManagement system, the External Service Providers systems and the Corporate Data Warehouse while allowing YVW to reduce integration costs that would otherwise be associated with maintaining many point-to-point integration interfaces. This is the first step in a phased rollout which will ultimately integrate approximately 100 applications at YVW.

The recent implementation also includes a new end-user reporting infrastructure for reporting on billing, water usage, sewer maintenance and water outages. “Oracle Application Server has removed report development bottlenecks, lowered report development costs, and improved reporting performance for end users,” said Simon Soon, CIO, Yarra Valley Water.

Vanguard Car Rental:

Owner of both National and Alamo car rental brands, Vanguard Car Rental operates a fleet of more than 217,000 automobiles in 83 countries making it one of the world’s largest car rental companies. To consolidate its technology systems, Vanguard re-architected its online car reservation Web site using the Oracle Application Server 10g application platform suite including Web Cache and J2EE on Linux. To date, the Alamo Web site is running on this architecture and the National brand Web site will soon follow.

“With Oracle, we have chosen the best available technology for our reservation platform, as well as for our online car rental Web site,” said Tyler Best, CIO, Vanguard Car Rental. “We have seen substantial increases in our Web reservations using Oracle software.”

JavaProNews provides articles, solutions, and practical examples for anyone programming in Java.

LogicLibrary, the leading provider of software asset management tools, today announced the release of Logidex 3.5 for J2EE and .NET platforms and development environments. Featuring compliance with the WS-I Basic Profile, UDDI governance, support for SAP NetWeaver Developer Studio, and enhanced search capabilities, Logidex 3.5 enables organizations to more effectively build and manage service-oriented architectures (SOAs).

WS-I Basic Profile, released by the Web Services Interoperability Organization, consists of a set of non-proprietary specifications and principles that promote interoperability among Web services. WS-I Basic Profile compliance means Logidex users, working within the integrated development environment (IDE) of their choice, can connect to and manage Logidex metadata repositories hosted on different platforms – providing unparalleled flexibility for enterprises moving forward with Web services and SOA projects.

“As companies have begun to develop and deploy Web services and SOAs, there has been an urgent need for a single, standardized foundation that can be implemented today and built upon later as standards continue to mature,” said Brent Carlson, vice president of technology and co-founder of LogicLibrary. “The WS-I Basic Profile fits this need, and Logidex 3.5 is the only software asset management solution that complies with it. This new cross-platform interoperability functionality offers our customers the ultimate flexibility in implementing Web services and frees them of the inherent limitations of tools that cannot interoperate across .NET and J2EE.”

Corporate computing environments are increasingly heterogeneous. According to Gartner, Inc., through 2007, 95 percent of midsize to large businesses will leverage Microsoft and Java technologies as integral elements of e-business strategies (0.8 probability).(a) As the industry’s premier collaborative software development asset (SDA) management solution for development, reuse and SOA projects, Logidex features tight integration with industry-leading IDEs including Microsoft Visual Studio .NET, IBM WebSphere Studio, IBM Rational XDE, SAP NetWeaver and Eclipse.

Logidex 3.5 also includes:

– UDDI Governance–New capabilities for governing the UDDI publication process enable customers to automatically control the publication of Web services to their UDDI registries. This improves the management of operational UDDI registries and seamlessly ties together the development and operational views of Web services within the enterprise.

– Open Source License Compliance (OSLC) Module–The OSLC Module provides a set of compliance checklists for all developers and QA teams to review when using open source software in their development projects. The checklist covers ten of the most widely used open source licenses and provides guidelines for proper usage, helping enterprises minimize the risks and reap the benefits of using open source software.

– Enhanced Asset Search–Complementing Logidex’s already powerful search capabilities are two new search-related features in Logidex 3.5: Advanced Query and Asset Discovery Alerts. The Advanced Query options allow users to search across all asset metadata and narrow their search to specific metadata elements as desired, further increasing the precision and accuracy of their searches. In addition, searches can now be marked as “alertable,” so users are notified when a newly published or updated asset meets the search criteria they have specified.

– Logidex Open Event Notification Framework–By exposing the Logidex SOAP-based event engine, now all “events of interest” are available for integration and tracking purposes. Customers have access to a configurable audit trail of all Logidex-related activities, wide-ranging event notifications based on specific installation requirements, and easy integration of Logidex with external workflow and orchestration tools. This new feature enables organizations to expand their use of Logidex across the enterprise by enabling them to report on a wide variety of activities and easily integrate Logidex with their existing workflow products.

– SAP NetWeaver Support–This new Logidex Plug-in is an enhancement that tightly integrates with SAP’s NetWeaver Developer Studio 2.0.4. Unlike other tools, Logidex is launched from within NetWeaver Developer Studio, allowing SAP developers to directly access all Logidex functionality, such as advanced search capabilities, Active Design and asset selection and deployment, without ever leaving their IDE. Using wizards provided by the Logidex plug-in, SAP developers can quickly and easily capture and consume various types of assets and artifacts including SAP J2EE projects, Web Dynpro projects and components, xApps and SAP patterns. This powerful Logidex capability allows SAP NetWeaver users to easily share and use assets and components in their reuse and SOA initiatives, increasing their productivity while reducing application delivery times.

“Implementing a successful service-oriented architecture requires discipline, governance and teamwork across IT and business organizations,” said Jason Bloomberg, senior analyst, ZapThink LLC. “Business users, application developers, portal developers and security experts all must operate as a cohesive unit in order for an SOA to realize its potential. Software asset management solutions such as Logidex provide the necessary governance and discipline to achieve the desired effects of an SOA, namely IT capabilities that achieve the long sought-after goal of reuse and meet the needs of continuously evolving business requirements.”

Logidex

Logidex is a collaborative software development asset (SDA) management solution that simplifies the creation, migration and integration of enterprise applications. It represents inherently complex, enterprise application environments in a graphical, intuitive way. Logidex is the only SDA management solution that offers federated library support, model-based searching, out-of-the-box assets, measurements and metrics–all within .NET and J2EE development environments.

DevNewz | Articles for professional developers

In March 2004, Sun Microsystems launched a new version of their existing Sun Certified Web Component Developer 1.3 (SCWCD 1.3) exam, which tests the web component development according to the latest J2EE 1.4 specification. The old version will co-exist and a separate upgrade exam will be made available soon.

What’s New In SCWCD 1.4?

The SCWCD 1.4 exam adds new objectives such as Expression Language, JSTL, and Tag files and revamps the existing objectives to test the new techniques introduced in JSP 2.0 and Servlets 2.4 specifications. Also some objectives such as SingleThreadedModel, which are deprecated now, have been removed from the exam, thereby making the exam more current and at par with the latest trends. The exam as such has changed in terms of increased toughness, more code-oriented rather than directly testing the concepts, and adds new types of questions like Drag N Drop.

Which One To Go For: SCWCD 1.3 or SCWCD 1.4?

If this is your first attempt, it’s better to go for the SCWCD 1.4 as the increased toughness and testing of latest technologies means more value addition to your career. If you are already an SCWCD 1.3, you can either take up the SCWCD 1.4 immediately or wait for the upgrade exam from Sun, which will be released soon.

This exam will help as an effective measure of your server side Java skills and hence become increasingly important for developers. If you want to prove your competency in “Java Web Components,” this is the exam for you. Also, if you are a programmer working in core Java, taking this exam will provide a definite advancement to your career.

Exam Info

• The Servlet Technology Model
• The Structure and Deployment of Web Applications
• The Web Container Model
• Session Management
• Web Application Security
• The JavaServer Pages (JSP) Technology Model
• Building JSP Pages Using the Expression Language (EL)
• Building JSP Pages Using Standard Actions
• Building JSP Pages Using Tag Libraries
• Building a Custom Tag Library
• J2EE patterns
• For detailed information refer to the complete exam objectives for the SCWCD exam, by Sun Microsystems.

Useful Resources

• Head First Servlets and JSP by Bryan Basham, Kathy Sierra and Bert Bates – Expected to be published in June 2004
• SCWCD Exam Study Guide by Hanumant Deshmukh, Jignesh Malavia and Jacquelyn Carter – Although this book is for the SCWCD 1.3 exam, it still helps you to cover most of the basic concepts
• Core J2EE Patterns – 2nd Edition by Deepak Alur
• Core Servlets – 2nd Edition by Marty Hall
• Professional JSP – 3rd Edition by Simon Brown
• Other recommended books

Tomcat Apache Version 5.0 is the best platform to practice on. It adheres to the latest JSP 2.0 and Servlet 2.4 specifications and it is absolutely free. You can download it here: Tomcat 5.0.

• JSP by Sun
• Servlets by Sun
• J2EE by Sun
• Design Patterns by Sun
• Custom Tags by Sun
• JSTL 1.1 reference

An exam simulator exercises your brain to make sure you understand the concepts and can apply them effectively in a given scenario. It also helps you get the feel of the real exam in terms of types of questions, toughness, and time management.

Whizlabs SCWCD Certification Exam Simulator is designed and developed to suit the above goals, by highly committed, experienced, and certified professionals. It ensures your success in the exam with its high quality Mock Tests, Interactive Quiz, and Quick Revision Tips on the latest pattern of the SCWCD exam.

Tips and Tricks

Discussion Forums and Groups

Even though you have access to all the resources listed above, you may want to hear about the experiences of other people. There are places for these too:

Conclusion

The Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE), has rapidly established a new model for developing distributed applications. Today it has reached a certain level of maturity on which many blue-chip organizations are relying for their complex enterprise-software-development needs. With this evolution of the J2EE platform, there has grown the need for industry-recognized J2EE Certifications. The SCWCD 1.4 is one of such recognized J2EE Certification exams, which tests your competence in Java Web Components. Being a Sun Certified Web Component Developer can help you improve your career potential, gain you more respect, increase job security, and keep you ahead of others.

Wish you all the best in your preparation.

Sivasundaram Umapathy is presently associated with Sella Synergy India Limited, India, the software division of Banca Sella, S.p.A., where he has been designing and developing mission critical banking applications with the J2EE platform using BEA WebLogic application server for the past 4.5 yrs. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Science from University of Madras and a Master of Science in Software Systems from BITS, Pilani. He is also crazy after certifications, with SCJP, SCBCD, SCWCD, SCEA, OCA, BEA, and IBM Certifications. In his free time, he can be seen in Apache Geronimo community as well as in Javaranch.

About Whizlabs

Whizlabs (www.whizlabs.com), an ISO Certified company, is a leading provider of IT skill assessment and certification exam preparation tools. Whizlabs’ suite of offerings include “IT Certification Exam simulators and Instructor-led, Online Trainings” for various exams by Sun, IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, BEA, Cisco, and other leading IT vendors and “IT skill Assessment Management Solution” for Corporations, Training Institutes, and Universities.

In its first 3 years of inception Whizlabs has helped 300,000 software professionals in realizing their dream of acquiring IT Certifications of their interest.

Whizlabs offerings have fuelled the career growth of IT professionals working in 321 Fortune 500 companies spread in 118 countries across the globe.

The basic elements of application management include administration and monitoring of the application infrastructure, as well as administration and monitoring of the applications themselves. Not all enterprise J2EE deployments demand sophisticated application management. The extent of the demand for effective application management will be driven by the scale, maturity, and importance of applications to the enterprise. And as J2EE deployments grow in these dimensions, good solutions to address the administration and monitoring of the J2EE applications and infrastructure deployed by enterprise IT are being deemed a priority. And application deployments that integrate well with the J2EE management architecture will be more likely to be successful.

Beyond basic application management, business use of the applications in mission-critical processes drives the demand for management functionality to support the business process and decisions. Applicationand business-specific data needs to be monitored to ensure proper response to changing conditions and dependencies across systems. As one can see from some of the business examples discussed below, the business needs may be specific to the business, but the value of being able to expose and act on application and business data is widely appreciated by business and IT managers. This ability to expose application and business data for management has thus far been difficult for, if not simply unavailable to, managers seeking such visibility.

The diversity of applications and application infrastructures has always made application management a challenge. Despite the best efforts of management vendors and others, there have been many hurdles in delivering effective application management to meet the needs of enterprise IT. A variety of management standards, technologies, and products have made small dents in the problem, but without widespread success. Meanwhile, the awareness of and business need for application management have been growing. The emergence of J2EE and other standardized application infrastructures with standard component models and “managed code” is in response to the strong need of enterprise IT for better control of application infrastructure. However, J2EE tools currently offered by the J2EE vendors address only a part of the application management problem.

An emerging management standard from the Java community is showing promise in directing us to a solution for both the core application management and business management needs. Java Management Extensions (JMX) is a standard being adopted by the Java industry to meet many of the application management challenges. As will be discussed, the powerful model adopted by JMX for simpler instrumentation and integration with existing management standards makes it a good way to bring together the elements needed to address the management problem.

The following sections describe how JMX is addressing the J2EE application management need and taking application management much further than previously possible. We first look more closely at management of J2EE applications in production, to help understand J2EE application management needs. We then discuss the issues to be addressed to enable effective application management for J2EE applications. Next we discuss JMX technology and how it provides the essential elements for J2EE application management. We show how the JMX model and capabilities can be leveraged to significantly change the usability and applicability of this technology. The automation, ease-of-use, integration, and flexibility make it possible to offer business benefits not previously available. We conclude with a discussion of the business benefits, and some examples of how these business benefits go beyond just the basic application management functions.

Managing J2EE Applications in Production

Enterprise adoption of J2EE has led to increasing deployment of applications built on J2EE in mission-critical business applications. It is useful to understand the different dimensions of management and the drivers for application management in these deployments. This will help provide a better picture of enterprise requirements.

In the early stages of any technology, when deployments are few and small-scale, there is not a lot of focus on ensuring that these applications are well managed. As the technology matures, however, an increasing emphasis is placed on going beyond application features and functionality. Enterprises then focus attention on ongoing operations, administration, and maintenance. As business use matures and scales, managing availability, downtime, upgrades, performance, sizing, security, integration, and other management aspects loom large in enterprise software deployments. As J2EE application deployments are increasingly serving mission-critical business functions, the importance of application management is rapidly growing.

The systems and network infrastructure upon which J2EE applications are deployed needs to be monitored and managed. This is to ensure that the CPU, memory, disk, network, and other resources needed by the applications are available and reliable. As the scale of the infrastructure grows, as well as the criticality of the applications to the business, it becomes more important to proactively manage these elements to ensure availability and sound performance. Not all of these aspects will need tight management in a given environment. For example, abundant network capacity may mean that network performance is not a concern needing proactive management. Therefore, each deployment may have a different set of system and network resources that need to be tightly managed.

In addition to the system and network infrastructure, the J2EE infrastructure – including thread and connection pools, database, Web server, and other software elements – needs to be monitored and managed. Here, the deployment choices will dictate what needs to be managed closely. It is quite useful for managers to be able to track the usage of various resources in the J2EE infrastructure, and be confident it is operating in good condition. Administrators may need to be notified by the management system when specific resources (e.g., connection pools) are running at full capacity to enable prompt action.

Beyond that, the focus typically shifts to end-to-end application performance and identifying performance issues in any part of the application transaction chain. Visibility into different application transactionsand the breakup of different elements of the transaction is useful in isolating performance bottlenecks. Most importantly, IT managers want to measure the end-to-end performance and be confident that the application is responsive to users. Any availability or performance issues need to be promptly reported by the management system so that rapid action can be initiated. Here, managers may not care to monitor everything, but rather focus on a subset of important application transactions.

The administration of a complex deployment becomes another management concern as the scale and diversity increase. While the typical administration console suffices for small deployments, with scale it becomes difficult to use and a source of configuration management problems. An integrated administration and configuration management solution becomes a key management requirement for large deployments. This is most important for large deployments where some aspect of each application or component is being modified frequently. Given the builtin flexibility provided to administrators by J2EE tools, there is a strong need to manage the configurations of all the servers.

Thus, J2EE application management is an important aspect of successful J2EE enterprise deployments. Most enterprises will only see increasing demand for application management tools and solutions as they increase their adoption of J2EE. Enterprise IT managers need the security of strong management solutions before they will widely deploy J2EE applications.

Application Management Challenges

For many application developers, management does not occupy a prominent place on their list of goals. In some cases, these application developers try to anticipate the administration and monitoring needs of their users, and build such administration, logging, and instrumentation capabilities into their applications. How this is done can vary considerably, and typically involves a variety of proprietary mechanisms for consoles, log files, and instrumentation mechanisms. While this seems to fulfill the immediate needs anticipated by application developers, this is usually a poor fit with the real requirements of enterprises that have to deal with a complex integration of many such applications, each with its own way to do administration and monitoring. For these enterprises, managing the diversity of management tools becomes a challenge in its own right.

A lack of perspective may often be the cause for the limited application management capability anticipated by developers. This goes beyond the fact that application developers are rightly focused on their own application. An operational maturity level is required to even feel a need for many of these management capabilities. Without scale and diversity, it is easy to make do without many of these capabilities. It is typical in a small deployment or organization to have no application management tools. However, once an organization experiences scale, diversity, outages, downtimes, and other operational facts of life, all these dimensions of management take on increased importance. It is often a result of experiencing high-profile outages that many of these enterprises have matured their processes and tools.

It is difficult – if not impossible – to anticipate all the management needs of a complex deployment with a diverse set of integrated systems and applications. Management tools address some of the needs some of the time, but it is typically necessary for operations to adapt its people, processes, and homegrown tools to deal with the limitations of available management solutions. IT operations has had to work with imperfect and incomplete management solutions for any complex deployment.

Given the different applications from a range of software vendors, and the multitude of custom-developed J2EE applications, application management vendors are hard-pressed to keep up with the real requirements. Applications evolve and change, and expecting application vendors to fully instrument and manage even the major commercial applications is difficult. They simply cannot serve more than a few select applications in this way. And more significantly, the vast majority of enterprise applications are custom-developed applications that are not instrumented by management vendors.

There is therefore a need for standard instrumentation by applications, such that the management application vendors can focus on using the data effectively from the many applications that expose them. While this has been recognized for some time, the range of approaches that have tried to address this problem over the years is impressive. These include SNMP, DMI, CIM/WBEM, AMI, and a host of other initiatives. Each has made some contribution, but we are left without a good solution to the problem. One cannot overlook the difficulty of instrumentation for application developers as one of the major reasons for the lack of a good solution.

Application developers view management as a chore to be performed as a last priority. They are tasked with focusing on the core application functions. Having them learn the details of management protocols and remote management systems before they can properly do instrumentation is a way to ensure that not much gets done. Therefore, both a limited understanding of the management requirements as well as a lack of efficient ways of getting the job done have hampered application developers. For the Java and J2EE community, JMX provides ways to get beyond these limitations.

JMX is playing a key role in shaping this trend toward better management of applications and application infrastructures. For example, many J2EE application server providers are using this technology for core control and management functions, and have made JMX an essential building block of their products. However, the most interesting aspect of this technology is that it enables powerful management capabilities for the applications themselves, rather than just the J2EE server or other middleware infrastructure. This ability to easily and directly manage the specific applications built on J2EE or other infrastructure is a major benefit of this new technology.

JMX Technology

JMX is a Java Community Process standard that specifies a model and the interfaces for remote or local management of Java applications. An important goal for JMX is to allow a broad range of management systems and applications access to instrumentation and control of the managed applications. JMX achieves this goal with a creative model that uses a common set of application management components and provides access via multiple protocols, such as SNMP and HTTP. With JMX, applications can be instrumented once and be managed via multiple protocols accessing the same management instrumentation. Furthermore, it allows for rapid manageability in ways that no longer require heavy lifting by application developers.

The architecture for JMX is illustrated in Exhibit 1. The goal of enabling remote management from different kinds of management applications and systems is solved with a layered approach.

Depending on the protocols supported by the JMX implementation, remote managers supporting SNMP, HTTP, or other management protocols can access the management information and control exposed by the MBeans for each application. Multiple management systems using different protocols can now simultaneously access the application management capability. Thus, JMX-based application management can be made available to existing enterprise management consoles traditionally used in enterprises.

By cleanly eliminating protocol and connector dependency from the MBeans and application instrumentation, JMX makes a number of other benefits possible. Management access to information and control of applications has always depended on providing this access through appropriate instrumentation. Through this simple but rich component model for creating this instrumentation, JMX makes it easier for developers. More importantly, it makes possible automated tools to generate instrumentation and radically simplify the burden on the application developer. This new breed of tool empowers the developer to quickly and easily provide the kind of information needed to properly manage his or her application.

JMX is also designed to meet the trend toward distributing application intelligence, rather than centralizing processing using dumb agents. This trend is driven by commoditization of processor power and memory, enabling more powerful distributed agents. Processing information closer to the source increases the ability to act on information instead of volumes of data and improves responsiveness. JMX is therefore a great fit with the drive to expose the appropriate information for business and service-level management.

The rise of Java and J2EE for the development of server-based applications has led to standard component models for server-side development. These well-defined component models are widely used by application developers in building applications that are being deployed for mission-critical enterprise functions. JMX, with its model of application instrumentation, is a great fit with these standard ways of building applications in Java and J2EE. Not only does it make it easy for developers to build this application instrumentation, but also gives rise to new ways of automating this task.

Automating Instrumentation For Application Management

The industry has long recognized that solving the application management problem would mean finding a good solution for the instrumentation of applications. Application management requires the ability to expose management information and control of applications via instrumentation. However, getting the instrumentation done has been a diffi- cult task, and many of the prior application management efforts have been largely unsuccessful probably for that very reason. Instrumentation is essential to enable effective management of applications and used to require a lot of effort and code by developers to achieve it.

If the instrumentation problem were made easy, it would open up application management and bring about many more effective solutions. Instrumentation is essentially what allows management solutions to monitor, administer, and manage applications. With good instrumentation, all kinds of management are feasible and the full range of needs is easily met. Management applications such as administration consoles, event consoles, performance management, configuration management, etc. would be easy to deliver, given the range of management frameworks and tools available.

The JMX model of instrumentation, which decouples the management protocol dependencies from the instrumentation, simplifies the problem. It allows developers to focus on the core instrumentation without having to figure out the details of the remote management protocols. However, the most significant benefit for instrumentation comes from combining JMX with self-describing capabilities within Java components. This enables a level of instrumentation automation that has a significant productivity impact. With standard component models and development architectures, the problem gets further simplified into fewer scenarios where automation is needed.

Freed of the dependence on management protocols and the specifics of management systems, exposing application management information and control can now be directly based on the application being managed. Tools that analyze the application and generate management are thus possible. And as a result, a new category of automated management tools based on JMX is emerging. This frees the application developer from the burden of building management instrumentation. For example, there is no longer a need for the application developer to manually add instrumentation code to measure the performance of business methods. The only task for the application developer is to select what information and control need to be exposed for management, and the tools and JMX implementation take care of the rest. The tool can generate the management instrumentation code, compile, and even deploy it automatically in many cases.

An important consequence of this kind of tool is the ability to add and change the management information and control being exposed without touching or disrupting the application code itself. As a result, manageability can be added or changed at any time in the product life cycle. As many application developers know, the management requirements sometimes change when the “rubber meets the road.” This type of tool allows for meeting these changing requirements, without the long delays associated with any change in the application code.

These benefits make it easy for operations and business staff to drive the capabilities post development, and post deployment. Thus, business and operations managers can react to real operations needs based on actual experience. Just as in software development, for management as well, the waterfall model of anticipating all requirements and capabilities ahead of time is not optimal. An iterative process of adding management capabilities based on needs arising out of ongoing operations is the best approach. The JMX tools make it possible for operations and business managers to quickly react to changing requirements and to have a better understanding of their needs.

As previously mentioned, this is applicable to more than just measuring availability and performance. Application and business data can be readily monitored along with availability and performance. This may include database, log file, or other sources of application data. The automated JMX tools make it easy for managers to leverage this data for business benefits such as greater operational efficiency, better customer service, and other benefits. The next section describes some of these business benefits.

Business-Oriented Management

Given the new ability offered to application developers and others to add manageability to an application at any stage, a number of benefits arise. This ability to quickly and easily overlay access to application management information and control is most valuable to business managers. Once applications become mission critical and widely used, many ideas are generated in the business to improve visibility or use the information in the application to trigger proactive management. However, managers often find that these ideas are bound to the application software development cycle, which has to be a long cycle for any production application. The ability to quickly add manageability will make it possible for short-term projects to mine this information and provide proactive monitoring.

In today’s information economy, concepts such as business activity monitoring (BAM) and real-time enterprise all capture a common need of enterprises to get rapid access to information and respond quickly based on that information. BAM is a term defined by Gartner for the concept of providing real-time access to critical business performance indicators to improve the speed and effectiveness of business operations. And the real-time enterprise is a similar idea, where the end-to-end business processes in the enterprise are integrated in real-time, reducing lead-times and improving efficiency and responsiveness to customer demands. In a traditional model of changing the application every time a business need is identified, the cycles of implementation are too long. With JMX and the capabilities it opens up, enterprises can quickly overlay management capability on existing applications without disrupting the application development or operation. The business objectives can thus be met in a very timely manner. JMX is therefore another powerful tool in an IT manager’s arsenal to achieve the promise of BAM and real-time enterprises.

In an enterprise J2EE deployment, application management could thus be used at multiple levels. Once application availability and performance is being monitored, administered, and managed, the IT operations problem can be considered under control. However, the applications and infrastructure are typically being used for a business purpose and the business managers desire visibility as well. As the business use evolves, the business managers would like to monitor and act on specific business data being generated by these applications. This helps drive business decisions and achieve efficiencies and other business benefits. The speci fics vary with each business, but some examples will help illustrate the business benefits.

Consider the example of a call center where operators work on J2EE applications in each step of their call processing. The process manager needs to monitor many aspects to effect improvements in the process. Sometimes, these needs are anticipated ahead of time and collected in logs or databases for use. However, what needs to be measured often changes as the process manager looks for new efficiencies or tries modi fications to the process. The ability to collect data on time spent in speci fic steps can help in driving and measuring efficiencies through process changes. For example, a process manager may want to know how much time operators spend accessing or searching a specific remote database for information, so that he can evaluate whether to invest in a faster local database optimized for their use. With the JMX tools, this kind of data can be mined at any time without interfering with or depending on the software development cycle of the call center application.

Another example is an E-commerce site, where customers place online orders for a range of products. For a successful site of any noteworthy scale, application performance is a significant concern, requiring good monitoring and management. Measuring buying patterns along with application performance is useful in knowing when one impacts the other. In addition, there are often cases where application data is very useful to business and IT managers for capacity planning, managing inventory, or almost any aspect driving business decisions. While such capabilities are sometimes built into the core applications, most business applications do not capture all such useful data across all the applications. The availability of application management solutions to provide this kind of data on demand can help drive business decisions for significant benefits. With JMX tools, business managers can ask for and quickly obtain this kind of business data from the application to drive changes.

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Tony G. Thomas is CTO of AdventNet, the first independent vendor of JMX technology. AdventNet provides management software products, which includes ManageEngine, a JMX management tool. Thomas is a member of the Java Community Process Expert Group driving JMX standards. Prior to founding AdventNet, he was at AT&T Bell Laboratories where his responsibilities included building and managing OSS software solutions. He obtained his PhD in Engineering from the Johns Hopkins University. He can be reached at tgt@adventnet.com.