                               jmx4perl
                               ========

INTRODUCTION

  jmx4perl provides a new way for accessing Java JEE Server management
  interfaces which are based on JMX (Java Management Extensions). It
  is an agent based approach, where a small Java Webapplication 
  deployed on the application server provides a an HTTP/JSON based
  access to the JMX MBeans registered within the application server.  

  A discussion about the pros and cons of an agent based vs. a direct
  JMX remoting (which is available via JSR 160 connectors) can be
  found in the manual "JMX::Jmx4Perl::Manual" contained within this
  package. The biggest advantage for an agent based approach is that
  no local java installation is required for using it.

HOW IT WORKS

  You need to deploy a small (~ 50k) Java Agent WAR (web archive) to
  the Java application server to monitor. Thats all on the java
  side. There is no need to add any startup parameters to the
  application server and to open any additional ports. All
  communication takes places via HTTP where JSON objects are
  exchanged. Additionally, the agent benefits from the security
  infrastructure in place which every application server provides for
  web application.

  The Perl module JMX::Jmx4Perl::Agent accesses this web application
  and transform the request's results from JSON into a simple pure
  Perl object. This distribution contains a sample Nagios check
  'check_jmx4perl' which use this result to perform various checks.
  The command line tool 'jmx4perl' provides an easy access to the
  agent, too.

INSTALLATION

  The Perl part installs as any other module via Module::Build, which
  you need to have installed. Using

  perl Build.PL
  ./Build
  ./Build test
  ./Build install

  will install the modules. If you have Java and "ant" (a Java build
  tool) installed, the Java agent will be compiled and packaged as
  well. However, this is not required. A precompiled "j4p.war"
  can be found in the "agent" directory.

  For the module to work, you need to deploy "j4p.war" to the
  JEE Server to monitor. The concrete steps depend on the specific way
  for deploying on the targeted server, which in most cases is a
  simple copying in to a specific directory. Please consult the
  documentation of your Java application server for the details (look
  for "deployment" and "war")

  To test it, you can use 'jmx4perl' with the URL of the depolyed
  agent:

      jmx4perl http://jeeserver:port/j4p
      
  Consult 'man jmx4perl' for further details. 
 
SUPPORTED APPLICATION SERVERS
  
  For now, the following Java Application Servers has been tested on
  the following servers:

  * JBoss 4.2.3 GA & 5.1.0 GA
  * Oracle WebLogic 9.2 MP3 & 10.0.2.0
  * Jonas 4.10.3 (with Jetty 5.1.10 and Tomcat 5.5.26)
  * Apache Geronimo 2.1.4 (Jetty 6 and Tomcat 6)
  * Glassfish 2.1
  * Apache Tomcat 4.1.39, 5.5.27 & 6.0.18
  * Jetty 5.1.15 & 6.1.18 (with JMX enabled)

  It is expected that every Java application server which runs with at
  least Java 1.5 and conforms to at least version 2.4 of the Servlet
  specification should work out of the box.  Please open a bug at
  http://rt.cpan.org/Public/Bug/Report.html?Queue=jmx4perl if you
  encounter any problems.

SOURCE REPOSITORY

  Jmx4perl's source is hosted on github.com. You can clone the repository 
  with git://github.com/rhuss/jmx4perl.git as URL

LICENSE
  
  Copyright (C) 2009 Roland Huss (roland@cpan.org)

  Jmx4perl is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it
  under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
  the Free Software Foundation, either version 2 of the License, or
  (at your option) any later version.

  jmx4perl is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
  WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
  MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU
  General Public License for more details.

  You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
  along with jmx4perl.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

  A commercial license is available as well. You can either apply the
  GPL or obtain a commercial license for closed source
  development. Please contact roland@cpan.org for further information.

PROFESSIONAL SERVICES

  Just in case you need professional support for this module (or
  Nagios or JMX in general), you might want have a look at
  http://www.consol.com/opensource/nagios/. Contact
  roland.huss@consol.de for further information (or use the contact
  form at http://www.consol.com/contact/)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many thanks go to Gerhard Lausser, who pushed to me to think harder
  about a better way for monitoring JEE Servers by Nagios. Good luck,
  Gerhard, with your forthcoming Nagios book !

BUGS 

  Please report any bugs and/or feature requests at 
  http://rt.cpan.org/Public/Bug/Report.html?Queue=jmx4perl

AUTHOR

  roland@cpan.org
