The simplest facility is message logging, which reports events within your applications as they occur and writes messages to a file or other repository. Depending on the criticality of your application, the complexity of the production environment, and the types of monitoring systems your organization uses in its operations center, your needs might be better served by building richer management facilities based on Java Management Extensions (JMX). JMX enables a generic management system to monitor your application; raise notifications when the application needs attention; and change the configuration or run-time state of your application to remedy problems.