When I started creating content for this journal, I assumed that each of my projects would have an “index story,” which would serve as the “home” for that project. Using stories in that way would require me to make changes to that index story whenever a project had updates. In practice, something about that approach just felt wrong—I'd prefer to think of each story as a time capsule, and once a story is published it's kind of set in stone (except for minor edits).

Journal provides extensible components for integrating new kinds of structured content (as “bundles”). Stories are implemented as a specialization of the bundle concept. In version 0.0.9, I've introduced a new “project bundle,” to provide that missing home location for each of my projects, and capture a more standardized set of project-related metadata.

This story originally served as the “project home” for the Zabbix/J. Now that my web publishing software provides native support for project management, the root of the project has moved.

The content of this introduction is relevant as of the 1.0.1 version of Zabbix/J.

Zabbix/J is a framework for integrating Zabbix monitoring into Java applications. Zabbix is an “enterprise-class open source distributed monitoring solution,” which provides telemetry and triggers across entire infrastructures. Zabbix/J makes it simple to expose metrics from your Java applications, giving them visibility as first class citizens in a Zabbix configuration.

Zabbix/J is a framework for integrating Zabbix monitoring into Java applications. Zabbix is an “enterprise-class open source distributed monitoring solution,” which provides telemetry and triggers across entire infrastructures. Zabbix/J makes it simple to expose metrics from your Java applications, giving them visibility as first class citizens in a Zabbix deployment.

The requirements for Zabbix/J are minimal. There is no need for any sort of JMX or application container—although it integrates well with these. Your application data is provided to Zabbix/J through a simple, one-method Java interface. When you start your application, you'll just instantiate, configure and start a Zabbix/J singleton—if you're using the Spring Framework, you can do this from a Spring context. That's all there is to it.

This story was originally published to serve as the “home page” for the Journal project. Now that Journal includes support for “project bundles,” the hub of the project has been replaced.

The content of this introduction is relevant as of the 0.0.8 version of Journal. I've already continued refining the design and current versions are a bit different than what's described here. I'm planning to do some additional writing about the evolution in future stories.

Journal is software for developing and publishing journals on the web. Journal combines Java, Spring 3, Lucene and Ehcache into an elegant solution for web content management. The presentation is modern, CSS-based and uses a responsive approach to layout—resize your web browser window and watch the layout adapt.