When you need to make an instance of ObjectName, you can use a constructor or you can use one of its static factory methods, but in all cases you must catch MalformedObjectNameException, which is a checked exception. This is a pain, especially when initializing fields. For example, you can't do this:

    private static final ObjectName MY_NAME = new ObjectName("a:b=c");

Instead you have to do this:

    private static final ObjectName MY_NAME;
    static {
        try {
            MY_NAME = new ObjectName("a:b=c");
        } catch (MalformedObjectNameException e) {
            throw new IllegalArgumentException(e);
        }
    }

In practice, if you need to do this sort of thing a lot, you'll define a utility method that encapsulates the construction and the try/catch. Such a method (or set of overloaded methods) should be part of the API.