.NET Multithreading
If you need high performance, or a rich user experience, you should consider multithreading. With .NET you can develop stable and robust multithreaded applications with minimal effort. .NET Multithreading teaches the basics in an understandable and practical way. It then focuses on .NET's mechanisms for multithreading and shows how easy it can be to develop applications with them. The book covers several design approaches such as one-thread-one-class, the asynchronous design pattern, and using queues as buffers between threads. It explains best practices and how to avoid common multithreading pitfalls such as deadlock and race conditions.
Table of Contents detailed table of contents
1. Process and Thread basics
1.1. What is a process, why do they exist?
1.2. Multitasking
1.2.1. Cooperative
1.2.2. Preemptive
1.3. How Preemptive Multitasking is Accomplished
1.3.1. What are threads and why should we care
1.3.2. Time slice and quantum
1.3.3. Context and Context switching
1.4. Summary
2. .NET from a Threading Perspective
2.1. .NET Architecture Overview
2.1.1. Framework Runtime
2.1.2. Class Libraries
2.1.3. ASP .NET
2.1.4. Custom Libraries
2.1.5. Managed Applications
2.2. Garbage Collection
2.2.1. Review of Garbage Collection
2.2.2. Finalization
2.3. Security
2.4. Summary
3. Multithreading in .Net
3.1. Application Domain
3.1.1. Compared to a Process
3.1.2. AppDomain
3.1.3. CreateDomain
3.2. Threads
3.2.1. Logical
Threading Namespace
Thread Class
ThreadStart delegate
3.2.2. Physical
System.Diagnostic.Process
System.Diagnostic.ProcessThread
3.3. Summary
4. Thread Lifecycle
4.1. Creating a new thread
4.1.1. Defining the thread’s entry point
4.1.2. Creating an instance of the ThreadStart delegate
4.1.3. Creating an Instance of the Thread class
4.2. Starting a thread
4.3. Ending a thread
4.3.1. Introduction to thread Exceptions
4.3.2. ResetAbort
4.3.3. Join - Waiting on a thread to exit
4.4. Determining a Thread’s Status
4.4.1. IsAlive
4.4.2. ThreadState
4.5. Summary
5. Controlling threads
5.1. Example: Web Site Monitoring
5.2. Naming Threads
5.3. Using Sleep and Interrupt
5.3.1. The Sleep Method
5.3.2. The Interrupt Method
5.4. Using Background and Foreground Threads
5.5. Using Suspend and Resume
5.5.1. The Suspend Method
5.5.2. The Resume Method
5.6. Exploring Thread States
5.7. Digging Deeper into Thread Control
5.7.1. Controlling Thread Priority
5.7.2. Setting Process Processor Affinity
5.7.3. Specifying an Ideal Processor
5.8. Summary
6. Communicating with threads
6.1. Using Data to Communicate
6.1.1. Public fields
6.1.2. Public properties
6.1.3. Queues and Threads
6.2. When things go badly
6.2.1. Race conditions
6.2.2. Deadlock
6.3. Summary
7. Concurrency Control
7.1. Understanding Thread-Safety
7.1.1. Race conditions in collections
7.1.2. Making collections thread-safe using the Synchronized method
7.1.3. Thread-Safety in Libraries
7.1.4. Understanding and Detecting Thread Boundaries
7.2. Atomic operations
7.2.1. The Interlocked Class
Decrement, Increment
Exchange, and CompareExchange
7.3. Lock and AsyncLock Statements
7.4. The Monitor Class
7.4.1. The Enter and Exit Methods
Comparing to synchronous locks
Creating critical sections
7.4.2. The TryEnter Method
7.4.3. The Wait and Pulse Methods
7.4.4. The PulseAll Method
7.5. Digging Deeper into Concurrency Control
7.5.1. The Volatile Keyword
7.5.2. Using COM+ Based Synchronization
7.6. Summary
8. Wait Handle Classes
8.1. An Overview of the WaitHandle class
8.2. AutoResetEvent:
8.2.1. Set
8.2.2. Reset
8.3. WaitHandle
8.3.1. WaitOne
8.3.2. WaitAll
8.3.3. WaitAny
8.4. ManualResetEvent
8.5. Mutex: WaitOne and ReleaseMutex
8.6. Summary
9. Reader Writer Lock
9.1. Reader Lock
9.1.1. Acquire and Release Reader Lock
9.1.2. IsReaderLockHeld
9.2. Writer Lock
9.2.1. Acquire, Release, and Is Lock Held
9.2.2. UpgradeToWriterLock
9.2.3. DowngradeFromWriterLock
9.2.4. WriterSeqNum and AnyWritersSince
9.3. ReleaseLock and RestoreLock
9.4. Summary
10. Thread Pool
10.1. ThreadPool Class and QueueUserWorkItem
10.2. RegisterWaitForSingleObject
10.3. Informational Methods and Properties
10.3.1. The GetMaxThreads and GetAvailableThreads Methods
10.3.2. The IsThreadPoolThread Property
10.4. The UnsafeRegisterWaitForSingleObject and UnsafeQueueUserWorkItem Methods
10.5. What ThreadPools are used for in .NET
10.6. Summary
11. ThreadStatic and Thread Local Storage
11.1. Using Thread Static Variables
11.2. Using Unnamed Data Slots
11.3. Using Named Data Slots
11.4. Freeing Named Data Slots
11.5. Summary
12. Delegates in Detail
12.1. Delegates Revisited
12.2. The ThreadStart Delegate
12.3. Callbacks
12.3.1. TimerCallback
12.3.2. WaitCallback
12.3.3. WaitOrTimerCallback
12.4. Handling Thread Exceptions in Windows Forms
12.5. Asynchronous Delegates
12.5.1. EndInvoke
12.5.2. AsyncCallback
12.6. Creating and Invoking Dynamic Delegates
12.7. Summary
13. Exceptions
13.1. Exceptions Revisited
13.2. Thread Related Exceptions
13.2.1. The ThreadAbortException Class
13.2.2. The ThreadInterruptedException Class
13.2.3. The ThreadStateException Class
13.2.4. The SynchronizationLockException Class
13.3. The AppDomain UnhandledException Event
13.4. Summary
14. Timers
14.1. Using Windows Forms Timers
14.1.1. Examining the System.Windows.Forms.Timer Class
14.1.2. Controlling Windows Forms Timers
14.2. System.Timers.Timer
14.2.1. Using in Windows Forms
14.2.2. Using in System Services
14.3. System.Threading.Timer
14.4. Summary
15. Windows Forms from a Multithreading Perspective
15.1. Windows Forms Multithreaded related issues
15.1.1. Introduction to the STAThread Attribute
15.1.2. Threading Related Issues Example
Delete Related elements
Insert Related elements
Information and Diagnostic Related elements
15.1.3. Race Conditions
Inconsistency
Instability
15.1.4. Event Related Deadlocks
15.1.5. Making Windows Forms Thread Safe
Invoke
InvokeRequired
15.2. Using the Graphics Object With Threads
15.2.1. Introduction to the Graphics object
Acquiring by overriding the OnPaint method
Acquiring using the FromHwnd method
15.3. Thread Related Application Events and Properties
15.3.1. ThreadException Event
15.3.2. ThreadExit Event
15.3.3. The MessageLoop Property
15.4. Summary
16. Unmanaged Code and Managed Threads
16.1. What exactly is an apartment?
16.1.1. Single Threaded Apartment Model (STA)
16.1.2. Multithreaded Apartment (MTA)
16.2. COM Interoperability
16.2.1. The ApartmentState Property
16.2.2. Apartment Conflicts
16.2.3. Discussion of the Example
16.3. Summary
17. Designing with Threads
17.1. The Asynchronous Design Pattern
17.1.1. File Sorting Example
17.1.2. The Sorter Class Library
The WorkUnit Class
Sorter Class
The "heart" of the Sorter class
17.1.3. Using the Sorter class
Synchronous Execution of Sort
Event Handlers
Asynchronous Execution of Sort
17.1.4. Steps to Follow the Asynchronous Design Pattern
17.2. MessageQueue Example
17.2.1. Message Producer
17.2.2. Message Consumer
Synchronous Receive
Asynchronous Processing using BeginReceive
Using BeginReceive with a callback
17.3. One Class One Thread
17.4. Performance issues
17.4.1. Multithreading overhead
17.4.2. Increasing Concurrency
17.4.3. Implications of multiple processors
17.5. Summary
18. Multithreading in J#
What's inside
- Creating multithreaded System Services
- Designing for high performance
- Using Asynchronous Delegates
- How to control thread execution
- Handling and logging errors
- How to protect data from corruption
- How to coordinate threads
- How to use ThreadPools effectively
About the reader
This book is written for intermediate .NET developers who know C# or VB .NET, but are not assumed to have a background in multithreading. It is rich in examples that will help you understand the subject and produce multithreaded applications that have the power of C++ while keeping the ease and reliability of .NET.