Java Threads

by Scott Oaks and Henry Wong

Book Overview

Threads are essential to Java programming, but learning to use them effectively is a nontrivial task. This new edition of the classic Java Threads shows you how to take full advantage of Java's threading facilities and brings you up-to-date with the watershed changes in Java 2 Standard Edition version 5.0 (J2SE 5.0). It provides a thorough, step-by-step approach to threads programming. Java's threading system is simple relative to other threading...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0596007825
• ISBN13: 9780596007829
• Release Date: October 2004
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media
• Length: 340 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 7.0" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Comprehensive coverage of multithreading and Java 5 inclusions.

> <br /> <br />This book is written for developers who are targeting the second wave of java programs - Intermediate to advanced level programmers will be able to get best value out of this book. Developers who are already familiar with the basics of java may also be able to get some value, but if you are completely new to java, please look elsewhere. <br /> <br />Without any futher ado, i will dive right into the deep end of the pool. This book is partitioned into 4 logical sections, though it is not explicit in the TOC. <br /> <br />1. Important Threading Concepts: <br />In this section, the author prepares us with the fundamentals of creating and managing a thread, basic synchronization concepts, synchronized keyword, lock mechanism, thread communication using wait-notify and condition-variables, minimal synchronization using volatile keyword and atomic variables, advanced synchronization classes like Barrier, Semaphore, CountdownLatch, etc. Chapters 1 through 6 underwrite this section and this is by-far the best part of the book. <br /> <br />2. Thread Pools/Schedulers: <br />This section first lectures around how thread scheduling materializes in java and how it is related to the underlying Operating System. Next, you are guided through a tour of Thread Pools and Task Schedulers that will enlighten us with quite a few new classes in java 5. Chapters 9 through 11 cover this section. <br /> <br />3. Threading and other Java APIs: <br />This section details how the threading API plays with other inbuilt java APIs like Collections, IO and Swing. Chapters 7,8 and 12 cover this section. <br /> <br />4. Misc topics: <br />Some miscellaneous thread topics like ThreadGroup, Security, Class Loading, Exception Handling and Performance are addressed in this section. Chapters 13, 14, and 15 cover this section. <br /> <br />Though this book wasn't an easy read, i found it extremely encouraging to have ONE comprehensive manual to understand both the threading concepts and the new java 5 inclusions. I recommend this book to anyone who is in the middle of a complex multi-threaded system or wishes to create one.

The 3rd Edition, book or software, finally gets it right.

The sub-title of this book is Understanding and Mastering Concurrent Programming and I think that this pretty well sums up what it's all about. In perhaps its simplest and most obvious task consider a word processing system. Periodically you want to save what you've typed. So you hit Control-S or whatever, and then you wait until the save is completed before you can continue typing. If the save routine and the data input routine were written using threads, both could run at once and you wouldn't have to wait to continue typing. That's a pretty trivial example compared to something like a web server where you get a request, prepare a page to be displayed and then send it out to the browser that made the request. If this had to be done sequentially, the resulting server would be slow; very, very slow. And since most communications channels are so much slower than the processor, you'd best have several threads running just to handle the transmission of the page. These are simple to understand threads. And the first one, saving and typing are fairly simple to program. To get suitable performance out of a web server, you want some pretty good programmers. No one is going to claim that programming in threads is the easiest kind of program to write. But it can be argued that programming threads in Java is easier than just about any programming language. This is especially true with the additions made in Java 2 Standard Edition Version 5.0 (J2SE 5.0). This book is not intended to be your first Java book. You need to know the Java syntax, philosophies, and have some experience in programming. But having said that, most of the Java programming books skip over threads or treat them very superfically. This book picks up where those books leave off. It's intended for the intermediate level programmer up to advanced. And it's an O'Reilly book, they don't do bad stuff.

Valuable experience based information on threading

I've always been amazed at how quickly engineers jump at the option to use threads. Threads create a whole new level of complexity and nasty bugs called 'heisenbugs' that disappear once the debugger gets switched on. That's why having a book that gives experienced based information about how to manage the complexity is so important. It's not just about APIs. The topics covered include performance issues, architectural information about where and how to use threading, and how to manage communications between threads. I recommend this book for any Java engineers creating threaded architectures, or writing code on top of a multi-threaded architecture.

Best Book on Java Threads

It not only covers the threads API, it also covers how they work and advanced tricks to using them.The problem which most of the threading material related to Java I've read in other books has contained errors. "Java Threads" as well as Doug Lea's "Concurrent Programming in Java" are the only accurate books that I know of although their focus is very different. Another good thing about this book is that it has much otherwise hard to find information about how threads actually work in Java.I highly recommend this book to anytone working with Java threads. I'm sure you will find information in here that you previously didn't know.