The UI below is a rough first cut at a console. However, it does have some real functionality even now. It is connecting to the QFJServer MBean server and retrieving session information. I added sessions for each FIX version to have a few more rows. The UI is using the Java Desktop Network Components (JDNC) library so the table is sortable and filters/highlighting can easily be added. The toolbar can be undocked. All columns are real data from the MBeanServer.
I'd like to have a QFJ-specific GUI for managing sessions, their supporting
services and application objects. One starting point would be to define the
desired functionality for this console, possibly in terms of use cases.
Some potential features:
- Display of basic session information
- Connection state
- Messaging statistics
- Session control
- Logoff, disconnect, logon, and reset sessions.
- Modify sequence numbers
- Automated monitoring and alerting (could be separate feature)
- Application monitoring
- Statistics
- Status and control
The application status monitoring would require a standard
data format for reporting application status. Each application
will be different and the JMX console should not be dependent
on application-specific classes. Using an XML description like
JBoss's XMBean (MX4J has something similar) descriptions would allow us to use dynamic mbeans
to do simple monitoring and control applications.
For monitoring I'm thinking of just a table and charting widget
that would work with any standard MBean. One challenge is how to
provide decent user interfaces for application control that requires
nontrivial user input. While I'm brainstorming, a possibility would
be for the application to provide an XML definition of a simple
Swing UI for entering nontrivial commands. The definition would tell
how to map the collection information to JMX operations. This
approach would be limited to standard Swing widgets to avoid any
remote classloading issues.