Looking at the syntax of mbean descriptors, I find that the use of XML (IMHO) makes room for quite a lot of mistakes. Type and name of the service is
mixed in one single attribute, and I really think this is an example of bad XML.

Right now, it looks like this:

<depends optional-attribute-name="OldRarDeployment">jboss.jca:service=RARDeployment,name=JBoss LocalTransaction JDBC Wrapper


..when it could look like this:

<depends optional-attribute-name="OldRarDeployment" type="jboss.jca.service.RARDeployment" name="JBoss LocalTransaction JDBC Wrapper"/>


..which makes it much more clear that here, you have an mbean of type X with the name Y, etc. Or, expressed as some sort of hierarchical pseudo-code:

// you have an...
mbean {
// of a certain..
type
// with a..
name
// relying on some..
code
// and it's having a..
dependency {
// of a certain..
type
// with a..
name
// and an..
optionalAttributeName
}
}

Does anyone agree with me, or am I alone thinking that mbean descriptors use XML in a bad way?

- Mikael