[jboss-as7-dev] Comparison of JMX information model and AS7 resource model

[Jeff Mesnil]

While working on adding AS7 notifications[1], I had an extensive look at the JMX information model to see how it modelizes notifications.
I took the opportunity to make a comparison of the whole JMX information model (including the extension for Model MBeans) to the AS7 resource model[2]

Notifications are the main thing missing in the AS7 resource model.

We have additional info (esp. a tree hierarchy) but there are some informations that JMX provides and we do not.
Amon the interesting info that we are missing:
- deprecated => we have deprecated info for attribute and operation but not for the resource as a whole
- since => we have no information on when a resource/attribute/operation has been added
- displayName => we have no human-readable info suitable for display (e.g. "JMS Queue" for jms-queue resource, same for attribute and operation names)
- lastUpdatedTimeStamp => when an attribute has been updated for the last time

Additionally, JMX's ObjectName can define patterns. AS7 PathAddress allows only wildcard for the path element value (e.g. /subsystem=messaging/hornetq-server=*/jms-queue=*) but not for a path element itself (e.g. /subsystem=messaging/* to match child of the subystem). 
The only use case where I would like to be able to use such a pattern is to register notifications more simply (i.e., send me any notifications for the messaging subsystem is simpler if I can use something like Ant's file pattern such as /subsystem=messaging/**/* instead of having to iterate on all the resource in the tree). 

Some of these infos could be added to AS8 resource model.
If we find that these missing infos are interesting, we could add them to AS8 resource model.

[1] https://issues.jboss.org/browse/AS7-370
[2] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AgnxDyYwHtqVdE9RaW9IM2lZbzBoclQ4YnNkVmtsWkE&usp=sharing#gid=0 sorry for the color blind :)
[3] http://ant.apache.org/manual/dirtasks.html

-- 
Jeff Mesnil
JBoss, a division of Red Hat
http://jmesnil.net/