IT as climbing: being able to find the easiest path is as important as being technically strong

Recently I was confronted with the challenge of monitoring a GridLink Datasource through Hyperic.
Neither Hyperic was able to autodiscover it, nor I was able to create a custom JMX plugin.
Finally an Oracle consultant came up with the idea of using the WebApplication (provided by Oracle) to connect directly to the DB with a "Select 1 from DUAL" and returning success or failure. Good enough for our needs. And Hyperic can very easily do a HTTP GET and parse the HTTP response.
I felt like an idiot. I tend to hammer a problem by all possible means until I break it, rather than finding workaround. I think this tendency is tied to one's personality. But it teaches me a lesson: if the wall is too hard for your head, look for a window...