Stuart Halloway has written a very enlightening piece covering configuration of Java applications. He introduces a concept of Component Configuration Interface, and goes on to define essential elements:

Structure. Producers and consumers of configuration information must agree on some structure for passing that information, and possibly a type system that allows structures to be validated for particular uses.

Lookup. There must be some way to locate the configuration information when it is needed.

Scope. Configuration information must bind to some specific slice of code and data. This slice could be some combination of server farm(s), machine(s), process(es), thread(s), object(s), or something more esoteric.

Metadata. Configuration information should expose metadata in a standard format. Tools can then process this metadata and tell users how the configuration information can be used.

It gives us a good framework on how to build in configuration into our applications. However, one is left wondering, how does this apply to JMX?