Java JMX Server

Question

I'm curious about how JConsole and JMX work together. Specifically, I have read this JConsole Guide which mentions that

jconsole uses a JMXConnector client to connect to the JMXConnectorServer in
the target application. If the application isn't started with the JMX agent
then there isn't a JMXConnectorServer and jconsole doesn't have anything to
connect too. In that case it uses a HotSpotTM VM specific mechanism to start
the JMX agent in the target VM. Once the agent is started then jconsole connects
as normal.

When I start jconsole it simply needs a port and hostname for the JMX information, so I'm wondering if its possible to access the MBeans through any arbitrary tcp connection (and thus any programming language), or if there is something special that jconsole is also doing?

I know how to access the MBean Factory though java, but I am curious if I can access these items through an arbitrary language via TCP or another straightforward mechanism. Also see link discussing rest connector.

Answer 1

By default, the JMX server provides connection via RMI. That will make it tricky to access the server through an arbitrary language.

However, the JMX server is not limited to RMI as the communication protocol. The architecture is extensible and pretty much any transport protocol might be used - but it would need to be written almost from scratch.

Take a look at Jolokia - they do a pretty amazing stuff to let you talk to the MBean servers via a bunch of protocols (REST is one of them), amongst other things.