Derby includes a set of MBeans (Managed Beans) and their attributes and operations, providing monitoring and management capabilities.
Before using the Derby MBeans, you should have a basic understanding of JMX technology. A good source of information is the "Monitoring and Management for the Java Platform" web page at http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/technotes/guides/management/ .
The Derby MBeans instrument one or more parts of a running Derby system. This instrumentation gives you real-time access to Derby-specific information and features from a host of your choice, if you configure your Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and the Derby security features to enable this access.
The Derby JMX features are automatically available when Derby is started in a JVM that supports the platform MBean server. Most versions of the Java SE platform support JMX technology (Java SE 8 Compact Profile 2, for example, does not).
You start Derby by loading the Derby embedded driver. If you are using the Derby Network Server, the embedded driver is automatically loaded in the server JVM when the server is started.
You may access the Derby MBeans by using an existing JMX client utility such as JConsole, or programmatically by writing your own Java code that uses JMX.