Management Guide

Management refers to how a running instance of Phoenix, along with its components, applications and blocks is supervised and manipulated. This guide covers the steps required to write management-enabled applications using Phoenix.

Management in Phoenix is divided into two distinct areas. The first area is the the management metadata. This is information about which applications, blocks and components should be managed, the operations and attributes to expose, and descriptions for each these to help guide the user. Each block and component stores this data in an 'MXINFO file' that is distributed along with the class files that make up Phoenix and the Phoenix-enabled applications.

The second area is the Phoenix component that uses the MXINFO files to generate a user interface through which Phoenix and its applications are interacted with. It is anticipated that a number of such interfaces will be developed. The current implementation of the management component uses the MXINFO files to generate ModelMBeans that are then registered and exposed through a slightly customized JMX implementation called MX4J.

Note that nothing about the MXINFO file is dependant on using JMX, and the block author does not need to know or care about how Phoenix, the application, and its blocks will be managed. His/her responsibility is limited to creating an MXINFO file.

The guide is broken into a number of sections, each covering a particular aspect of the management picture.

This section provides a conceptual overview of the elements that are used to represent management information within Phoenix. An understanding of these elements and their relationships is essential for all users of the management functionality.

Structure

This section walks through the steps that are needed to make a block manageable. The emphasis is on illuminating the process, it does not cover every feature or option.

Step-by-Step

Management meta-data is stored in MXINFO files. This section describes its structure, as well as the runtime requirements of the management agent.

MXINFO Format

Instead of writing MXINFO files directly it is recommended that component and block authors make use of custom tags inserted into the source code. These tags are parsed using the XDoclet engine to produce the MXINFO file. This section describes how to use the feature.

XDoclet Tags