The Management Plug-in Archive (MPA) play an important role at several stages in the lifecycle of the Management Plug-in (MP). First, the MPA serves as a container for a newly created Management Plug-in (MP). The MP is simply a collection of files until those files are added to a MPA, creating the association between the files and officially making them an MP. The other function of the MPA is as a transport mechanism. Since the MPA is the only way for a MP to exist outside of the Management Repository, the only method to transport a MP from one Enterprise Manager system to another is by using a MPA file.
The MPA is an archive file, usually a jar file. A MP is created by adding
files to the MPA through the Enterprise Manager Command Line Interface (CLI).
Each call to the CLI adds another unique MP to the MPA. With each MP,
the CLI allows you to specify a base version of the agent that the MP is expected
to work against and a base version that the Oracle Management Services must
be for the MP to be imported into the Management Repository. Importing
a MPA is the only way that MPs can be imported into the repository.
Creating a Management Plug-in Archive
Exporting a Management Plug-in
Enterprise Manager Information Roadmap
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