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    C# 2008 and 2005 Threaded Programming: Beginner's Guide
    C# 2008 and 2005 Threaded Programming: Beginner's Guide
    C# 2008 and 2005 Threaded Programming: Beginner's Guide
    Ebook887 pages5 hours

    C# 2008 and 2005 Threaded Programming: Beginner's Guide

    By Gastón C. Hillar

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    About this ebook

    In Detail

    Most modern machines have dual core processors. This means that multitasking is built right into your computer's hardware. Using both cores means your applications can process data faster and be more responsive to users. But to fully exploit this in your applications, you need to write multithreading code, which means learning some challenging new concepts.

    This book will guide you through everything you need to start writing multithreaded C# applications. You will see how to use processes and threads in C#, .NET Framework features for concurrent programming, sharing memory space between threads, and much more. The book is full of practical, interesting examples and working code.

    This book begins with the fundamental concepts such as processes, threads, mono-processor systems, multi-processor systems. As the book progresses, the readers get a clear understanding of starting, joining, pausing and restarting threads. The readers get a better understanding of the simple techniques associated with parallelism. There are short exercises at the end of every chapter for the readers to perform.

    The book also includes several practical parallelism algorithms and data structures used for illustration, and best practices and practical topics like debugging and performance.

    A practical guide to developing responsive multi-threaded and multi-process applications in C#

    Approach

    This is a concise practical guide that will help you learn C# threaded programming, with lot of examples and clear explanations. It is packed with screenshots to aid your understanding of the process.

    Who this book is for

    Whether you are a beginner to working with threads or an old hand that is looking for a reference, this book should be on your desk. This book will help you to build scalable, high performance software using parallel programming techniques.

    Students learning introductory threaded programming in C# will also gain benefits from this book.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPackt Publishing
    Release dateJan 28, 2009
    ISBN9781847197115
    C# 2008 and 2005 Threaded Programming: Beginner's Guide
    Author

    Gastón C. Hillar

    Gaston C. Hillar has been working with computers since he was eight. He began programming with the legendary Texas TI-99/4A and Commodore 64 home computers in the early 80s. He has a Bachelor degree in Computer Science, graduated with honors, and an MBA (Master in Business Administration), graduated with an outstanding thesis. He worked as developer, architect, and project manager for many companies in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Now, he is an independent IT consultant and a freelance author always looking for new adventures around the world. He also works with electronics (he is an electronics technician). He is always researching about new technologies and writing about them. He owns an IT and electronics laboratory with many servers, monitors, and measuring instruments. Gaston write the C# 2008 and 2005 Threaded Programming: Beginner's Guide also published by Packt. He is also the author of more than 40 books in Spanish about computer science, modern hardware, programming, systems development, software architecture, business applications, balanced scorecard applications, IT project management, the Internet, and electronics. He contributes to Dr. Dobb's Go Parallel programming portal http://www.ddj.com/go-parallel/ and he is a guest blogger at Intel Software Network http://software.intel.com He usually writes articles for Spanish magazines Mundo Linux, Solo Programadores and Resistor.

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      C# 2008 and 2005 Threaded Programming - Gastón C. Hillar

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      Table of Contents

      C# 2008 and 2005 Threaded Programming

      Credits

      About the Author

      Acknowledgement

      About the Reviewers

      Preface

      What this book covers

      What you need for this book

      Who is this book for

      Conventions

      Time for action — Uploading a document

      What just happened?

      Pop quiz

      Have a go hero

      Reader feedback

      Customer support

      Downloading the example code for the book

      Errata

      Piracy

      Questions

      1. Taking Advantage of Multiprocessing and Multiple Cores

      Mono-processor systems: The old gladiators

      Single core: Only one warrior to fight against everybody

      Doing a tiny bit of each task

      The performance waterfall

      Have a go hero - Researching micro-architectures and applications

      Multi-processor systems: Many warriors to win a battle

      Have a go hero - Multi-processing systems

      Estimating performance improvements

      Have a go hero - Calculating an estimated performance improvement

      Avoiding bottlenecks

      Have a go hero - Detecting bottlenecks

      Taking advantage of multiple execution cores

      Have a go hero - Counting cores

      Scalability

      Have a go hero - Detecting scalability problems

      Load balancing: Keeping everybody happy

      Have a go hero - Thinking about load balancing

      Operating systems and virtual machines

      Parallelism is here to stay

      Have a go hero - Preparing minds for parallelism

      Summary

      2. Processes and Threads

      Processes—any running program

      Time for action — Coding a simple CPU-intensive loop

      What just happened?

      Time for action — Changing the cores available for a process

      What just happened?

      Relating processes to cores

      Time for action — Changing a process priority

      What just happened?

      Linear code problems in multiprocessing systems

      Time for action — Running many processes in parallel

      What just happened?

      Time for action — Testing parallelism capabilities with processes

      What just happened?

      Time for action — Using the Process Explorer

      Threads—Independent parts of a process

      Time for action — Listing threads with Process Explorer

      Have a go hero - Searching multithreaded applications

      Time for action — Analyzing context switches with Process Explorer

      What just happened?

      Multiple threads in servers

      Multiple threads in clients

      Have a go hero - Redesigning algorithms using pseudo-code

      Summary

      3. BackgroundWorker—Putting Threads to Work

      RTC: Rapid thread creation

      Time for action — Breaking a code in a single thread

      What just happened?

      Time for action — Defining the work to be done in a new thread

      What just happened?

      Have a go hero - Adding UI elements and monitoring the application

      Asynchronous execution

      Time for action — Understanding asynchronous execution step-by-step

      What just happened?

      Synchronous execution

      Showing the progress

      Time for action — Using a BackgroundWorker to report progress in the UI

      What just happened?

      Have a go hero - Reporting progress in many ways

      Cancelling the job

      Time for action — Using a BackgroundWorker to cancel the job

      What just happened?

      Time for action — Using a BackgroundWorker to detect a job completed

      What just happened?

      Time for action — Working with parameters and results

      What just happened?

      Have a go hero - Enhancing the application

      Working with multiple BackgroundWorker components

      Time for action — Using many BackgroundWorker components to break the code faster

      What just happened?

      Have a go hero - Monitoring and enhancing the application

      BackgroundWorker and Timer

      BackgroundWorker creation on the fly

      Time for action — Creating BackgroundWorker components in run-time

      What just happened?

      Have a go hero - Enhancing the code

      Pop quiz

      Summary

      4. Thread Class—Practical Multithreading in Applications

      Creating threads with the Thread class

      Time for action — Defining methods for encryption and decryption

      What just happened?

      Time for action — Running the encryption in a new thread using the Thread class

      What just happened?

      Decoupling the UI

      Creating a new thread

      Retrieving data from threads

      Sharing data between threads

      Time for action — Updating the UI while running threads

      What just happened?

      Sharing some specific data between threads

      A BackgroundWorker helping a Thread class

      Time for action — Executing the thread synchronously

      What just happened?

      Main and secondary threads

      Have a go hero - Concurrent encryption algorithms

      Passing parameters to threads

      Time for action — Using lists for thread creation on the fly I

      What just happened?

      Time for action — Using lists for thread creation on the fly II

      What just happened?

      Creating as many threads as the number of cores

      Receiving parameters in the thread method

      Have a go hero - Concurrent UI feedback

      Pop quiz

      Summary

      5. Simple Debugging Techniques with Multithreading

      Watching multiple threads

      Time for action — Understanding the difficulty in debugging concurrent threads

      What just happened?

      Debugging concurrent threads

      Time for action — Finding the threads

      What just happened?

      Understanding the information shown in the Threads window

      Time for action — Assigning names to threads

      What just happened?

      Identifying the current thread at runtime

      Debugging multithreaded applications as single-threaded applications

      Time for action — Leaving a thread running alone

      What just happened?

      Freezing and thawing threads

      Viewing the call stack for each running thread

      Have a go hero - Debugging and enhancing the encryption algorithm

      Showing partial results in multithreaded code

      Time for action — Explaining the encryption procedure

      What just happened?

      Showing thread-safe output

      Time for action — Isolating results

      What just happened?

      Understanding thread information in tracepoints

      Have a go hero - Concurrent decryption

      Pop quiz

      Summary

      6. Understanding Thread Control with Patterns

      Starting, joining, pausing, and restarting threads

      Time for action — Defining methods for counting old stars

      What just happened?

      Avoiding conflicts

      Splitting image processing

      Understanding the pixels' color compositions

      Time for action — Running the stars counter in many concurrent threads

      What just happened?

      Creating independent blocks of concurrent code

      Using flags to enhance control over concurrent threads

      Rebuilding results to show in the UI

      Testing results with Performance Monitor and Process Explorer

      Time for action — Waiting for the threads' signals

      What just happened?

      Using the AutoResetEvent class to handle signals between threads

      Using the WaitHandle class to check for signals

      Have a go hero - Pausing and restarting threads with flags

      Pop quiz

      Summary

      7. Dynamically Splitting Jobs into Pieces—Avoiding Problems

      Running split jobs many times

      Time for action — Defining new methods for running many times

      What just happened?

      Time for action — Running a multithreaded algorithm many times

      What just happened?

      Using classes, methods, procedures, and functions with multithreading capabilities

      Time for action — Analyzing the memory usage

      What just happened?

      Understanding the garbage collector with multithreading

      Time for action — Collecting the garbage at the right time

      What just happened?

      Controlling the system garbage collector with the GC class

      Avoiding garbage collection problems

      Avoiding inefficient processing usage problems

      Have a go hero - Queuing threads and showing progress

      Retrieving the total memory thought to be allocated

      Generalizing the algorithms for segmentation with classes

      Time for action — Creating a parallel algorithm piece class

      What just happened?

      Time for action — Using a generic method in order to create pieces

      What just happened?

      Creating the pieces

      Time for action — Creating a parallel algorithm coordination class

      What just happened?

      Starting the threads associated to the pieces

      Accessing instances and variables from threads' methods

      Time for action — Adding useful classic coordination methods

      What just happened?

      Have a go hero - Splitting algorithms specializing classes

      Pop quiz

      Summary

      8. Simplifying Parallelism Complexity

      Specializing the algorithms for segmentation with classes

      Time for action — Preparing the parallel algorithm classes for the factory method

      What just happened?

      Defining the class to instantiate

      Preparing the classes for inheritance

      Time for action — Creating a specialized parallel algorithm piece subclass

      What just happened?

      Creating a complete piece of work

      Writing the code for a thread in an instance method

      Time for action — Creating a specialized parallel algorithm coordination subclass

      What just happened?

      Creating simple constructors

      Time for action — Overriding methods in the coordination subclass

      What just happened?

      Programming the piece creation method

      Programming the results collection method

      Time for action — Defining a new method to create an algorithm instance

      What just happened?

      Forgetting about threads

      Time for action — Running the Sunspot Analyzer in many concurrent independent pieces

      What just happened?

      Optimizing and encapsulating parallel algorithms

      Achieving thread affinity

      Avoiding locks and many synchronization nightmares

      Have a go hero - Avoiding side-effects

      Pop quiz

      Summary

      9. Working with Parallelized Input/Output and Data Access

      Queuing threads with I/O operations

      Time for action — Creating a class to run an algorithm in an independent thread

      What just happened?

      Time for action — Putting the logic into methods to simplify multithreading

      What just happened?

      Avoiding Input/Output bottlenecks

      Using concurrent streams

      Controlling exceptions in threads

      Time for action — Creating the methods for queuing requests

      What just happened?

      Using a pool of threads with the ThreadPool class

      Managing the thread queue in the pool

      Time for action — Running concurrent encryptions on demand using a pool of threads

      What just happened?

      Converting single-threaded tasks to a multithreaded pool

      Encapsulating scalability

      Thread affinity in a pool of threads

      Have a go hero - Managing the pool of threads

      Parallelizing database access

      Have a go hero - Creating a parallelized data access algorithm

      Pop quiz

      Summary

      10. Parallelizing and Concurrently Updating the User Interface

      Updating the UI from independent threads

      Time for action — Creating a safe method to update the user interface

      What just happened?

      Creating delegates to make cross-thread calls

      Figuring out the right thread to make the call to the UI

      Avoiding UI update problems with a delegate

      Retrieving results from a synchronous delegate invoke

      Time for action — Invoking a user interface update from a thread

      What just happened?

      Providing feedback when the work is finished

      Time for action — Identifying threads and giving them names

      What just happened?

      Time for action — Understanding how to invoke delegates step-by-step

      What just happened?

      Decoding the delegates and concurrency puzzle

      Time for action — Creating safe counters using delegates and avoiding concurrency problems

      What just happened?

      Taking advantage of the single-threaded UI to create safe counters

      Have a go hero - Implementing a Model-View-Controller design

      Reporting progress to the UI from independent threads

      Time for action — Creating the classes to show a progress bar column in a DataGridView

      What just happened?

      Time for action — Creating a class to hold the information to show in the DataGridView

      What just happened?

      Time for action — Invoking multiple asynchronous user interface updates from many threads

      What just happened?

      Creating a delegate without parameters

      Invoking a delegate asynchronously to avoid performance degradation

      Time for action — Updating progress percentages from worker threads

      What just happened?

      Providing feedback while the work is being done

      Have a go hero - Creating a parallelized user interface

      Pop quiz

      Summary

      11. Coding with .NET Parallel Extensions

      Parallelizing loops using .NET extensions

      Time for action — Downloading and installing the .NET Parallel Extensions

      What just happened?

      No silver bullet

      Time for action — Downloading and installing the imaging library

      What just happened?

      Time for action — Creating an independent class to run in parallel without side effects

      What just happened?

      Counting and showing blobs while avoiding side effects

      Time for action — Running concurrent nebula finders using a parallelized loop

      What just happened?

      Using a parallelized ForEach loop

      Coding with delegates in parallelized loops

      Working with a concurrent queue

      Controlling exceptions in parallelized loops

      Time for action — Showing the results in the UI

      What just happened?

      Combining delegates with a BackgroundWorker

      Retrieving elements from a concurrent queue in a producer-consumer scheme

      Time for action — Providing feedback to the UI using a producer-consumer scheme

      What just happened?

      Creating an asynchronous task combined with a synchronous parallel loop

      Changing the threads' names while debugging

      Time for action — Invoking a UI update from a task

      What just happened?

      Providing feedback when each job is finished

      Using lambda expressions to simplify the code

      Parallelizing loops with ranges

      Parallelizing queries

      Time for action — Parallelized counter

      What just happened?

      Parallelizing LINQ queries with PLINQ

      Specifying the degree of parallelism for PLINQ

      Parallelizing statistics and multiple queries

      Have a go hero - Creating a parallelized user interface

      Pop quiz

      Summary

      12. Developing a Completely Parallelized Application

      Joining many different parallelized pieces into a complete application

      Time for action — Creating an opacity effect in an independent thread

      What just happened?

      Running code out of the UI thread

      Time for action — Creating a safe method to change the opacity

      What just happened?

      Blocking the UI—Forbidden with multithreading code

      Time for action — Creating a class to run a task in an independent thread

      What just happened?

      Time for action — Putting the logic into methods to simplify running tasks in a pool of threads

      What just happened?

      Time for action — Queuing requests, running threads, and updating the UI

      What just happened?

      Combining threads with a pool of threads and the UI thread

      Time for action — Creating a specialized parallel algorithm piece subclass to run concurrently with the pool of threads

      What just happened?

      Time for action — Creating a specialized parallel algorithm coordination subclass to run concurrently with the pool of threads

      What just happened?

      Time for action — Overriding methods in the brightness adjustment coordination subclass

      What just happened?

      Time for action — Starting new threads in a new window

      What just happened?

      Creating threads inside other threads

      Time for action — Showing new windows without blocking the user interface

      What just happened?

      Multiple windows and one UI thread for all of them

      Rationalizing multithreaded code

      Have a go hero - Improving the application and solving bugs

      Have a go hero - Creating parallel, multithreaded applications using the C# programming language

      Pop quiz

      Summary

      Index

      C# 2008 and 2005 Threaded Programming

      Gastón C. Hillar

      C# 2008 and 2005 Threaded Programming

      Beginner's Guide

      Copyright © 2009 Packt Publishing

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

      Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, Packt Publishing, nor its dealers or distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

      Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

      First published: January 2009

      Production Reference: 1200109

      Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

      32 Lincoln Road

      Olton

      Birmingham, B27 6PA, UK.

      ISBN 978-1-847197-10-8

      www.packtpub.com

      Cover Image by Vinayak Chittar (<[email protected]>)

      Credits

      Author

      Gastón C. Hillar

      Reviewers

      Bogdan Brinzarea-Iamandi

      Jerry L. Spohn

      Ron Steckly

      Senior Acquisition Editor

      David Barnes

      Development Editor

      Shilpa Dube

      Technical Editor

      Rakesh Shejwal

      Editorial Team Leader

      Akshara Aware

      Copy Editor

      Sumathi Sridhar

      Project Team Leader

      Lata Basantani

      Project Coordinator

      Rajashree Hamine

      Project Editorial Manager

      Abhijeet Deobhakta

      Indexer

      Monica Ajmera

      Proofreaders

      Chris Smith

      Ron Steckly

      Production Coordinator

      Rajni R. Thorat

      Cover Work

      Rajni R. Thorat

      About the Author

      Gastón C. Hillar has been working with computers since he was eight. He began programming with the legendary Texas TI-99/4A and Commodore 64 home computers in the early 80s.

      He has a Bachelor degree in Computer Science, graduated with honors, and an MBA (Master in Business Administration), graduated with an outstanding thesis.

      He has worked as developer, architect, and project manager for many companies in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He was project manager in one of the most important mortgage loan banks in Latin America for several years. Now, he is an independent IT consultant working for several Spanish, German, and Latin American companies, and a freelance author. He is always looking for new adventures around the world.

      He also works with electronics (he is an electronics technician). He is always researching about new technologies and writing about them. He owns an IT and electronics laboratory with many servers, monitors, and measuring instruments.

      He is the author of more than 40 books in Spanish about computer science, modern hardware, programming, systems development, software architecture, business applications, balanced scorecard applications, IT project management, Internet, and electronics, published by Editorial HASA and Grupo Noriega Editores.

      He usually writes articles for leading Spanish magazines Mundo Linux, Solo Programadores, and Resistor.

      He lives with his wife, Vanesa, and his son, Kevin. When not tinkering with computers, he enjoys developing and playing with wireless virtual reality devices and electronics toys with his father, his son, and his nephew Nico.

      You can reach him at <[email protected]>

      Acknowledgement

      When writing this book, I was fortunate to work with an excellent team at Packt Publishing Ltd, whose contributions vastly improved the presentation of this book. David Barnes helped me to transform the idea into the final book and to give my first steps working with the Beginner's Guide. Rajashree Hamine made everything easier with her incredible time management. Shilpa Dube helped me realize my vision for this book and provided many sensible suggestions regarding the text, the format, and the flow. The reader will notice her excellent work. Rakesh Shejwal made the sentences, the paragraphs, and the code easier to read and to understand. He has added great value to the final drafts.

      I would like to thank my technical reviewers Bogdan Brinzarea-Iamandi, Jerry L. Spohn, and Ron Steckly and proofreaders Chris Smith and Ron Steckly, for their thorough reviews and insightful comments. I was able to incorporate some of the knowledge and wisdom they have gained in their many years in the software development industry. The examples and the code include the great feedback provided by Bogdan Brinzarea. Bogdan helped me a lot to include better and shorter code to simplify the learning process.

      I wish to acknowledge Hector A. Algarra, who always helped me to improve my writing.

      Special thanks go to my wife, Vanesa S. Olsen, my son Kevin, my nephew, Nicolas, my father, Jose Carlos, who acted as a great sounding board and participated in many hours of technical discussions, my sister, Silvina, who helped me when my grammar was confusing, and my mother Susana. They always supported me during the production of this book.

      About the Reviewers

      Bogdan Brinzarea-Iamandi has a strong background in Computer Science holding a Master and Bachelor Degree from the Automatic Control and Computers Faculty of the Politehnica University of Bucharest, Romania, and also an Auditor diploma from the Computer Science department at Ecole Polytechnique, Paris, France. His main interests cover a wide area from embedded programming, distributed and mobile computing, and new web technologies.

      Currently, he is employed as Supervisor within the team of the Alternative Channels Sector of the IT Division in Banca Romaneasca, a Member of the National Bank of Greece. He is Project Manager for Internet Banking and he coordinates other projects related to new technologies and applications to be implemented in the banking area.

      Bogdan is also the author of two AJAX books, the popular AJAX and PHP: Building Responsive Web Applications and Microsoft AJAX Library Essentials, also published by Packt.

      Jerry Spohn is a Manager of Development for a medium-sized software development firm in Exton, Pennsylvania. His responsibilities include managing a team of developers and assisting in architecting a large multi-lingual, multi-currency loan account system, written in COBOL and JAVA. He is also responsible for maintaining and tracking a system-wide program and database documentation web site, in which he uses DotNetNuke as the portal for this information.

      Jerry is also the owner of Spohn Software LLC., a small consulting firm that helps small businesses in the area with all aspects of maintaining and improving their business processes. This includes helping with the creation and maintenance of web sites, general office productivity issues, and computer purchasing and networking. Spohn Software, as a firm, prefers to teach its clients how to solve their problems internally, rather than acquire a long-term contract, thereby making the business more productive and profitable in the future.

      Jerry currently works and resides in Pennsylvania, with his wife, Jacqueline, and his two sons, Nicholas and Nolan.

      Ron Steckly has been developing various platforms for the past several years, recently adopting .NET as his platform of choice. He graduated from U.C. Berkeley with highest distinction in 2004. He recently moved back to sunny Northern California after living for several years in Manhattan. He is currently working as a Web Application Engineer at Empirical Education in Palo Alto, CA and authoring a book on using MySQL with .NET for Packt Publishing. In his spare time, he enjoys studying mathematics (particularly combinatorics), statistics, economics, and new programming languages.

      I would like to thank my good friends Johannes Castner, Josh Brandt-Young, and David Aaron Engle for all their kindness and patience over the years.

      To my son, Kevin

      Preface

      Most machines today have multiple core processors; to make full use of these, applications need to support multithreading. This book will take your C# development skills to the next level. It includes best practices alongside theory and will help you learn the various aspects of parallel programming, thereby helping you to build your career. The book covers various aspects of parallel programming—right from planning, designing, preparing algorithms and analytical models up to specific parallel programming systems. It will help you learn C# threaded programming, with numerous examples and clear explanations packed with screenshots to aid your understanding of every process. After all of the code is written, it is bundled in .zip files for easy availability and use.

      What this book covers

      Chapter 1 acknowledges the advantages of parallel programming with C# for the coming years. It also elaborates on the challenges associated with parallel processing and programming.

      Chapter 2 focuses on the fundamentals of the operating system scheduler and how a single application can be divided into multiple threads or different processes. It also explains the different ways of using threads to work in clients and servers.

      Chapter 3 shows how to develop applications that are able to create background threads, start and cancel threads, and launching multiple threads using the BackgroundWorker components. It also discusses the differences between multiple threads using BackgroundWorker and Timers.

      Chapter 4 introduces the powerful Thread class, using which one can create independent and very flexible threads. It also discusses the differences between multiple threads, using BackgroundWorker and employing the Thread class, and ways to create high performance applications.

      Chapter 5 focuses on debugging applications with many concurrent threads and coordinating the entire debugging process. It also explains the differences between single-threaded debugging and multithreading debugging for threads created using BackgroundWorker and employing the Thread class and many tricks that help simplifying the debugging process.

      Chapter 6 takes a closer look at working with independent blocks of code when concurrency is not allowed, managing and coordinating those using new techniques different from the ones offered by the Thread class. It also explains how to apply parallel algorithms to image processing, and the solutions to the most common problems when working with components not enabled for multithreading.

      Chapter 7 shows how to improve the memory usage in heavy multithreading applications, managing and coordinating the garbage collection service, and using an object-oriented approach for splitting jobs into well-managed pieces, easily and dynamically. It also covers developing highly optimized multithreaded algorithms.

      Chapter 8 elaborates on using object-oriented capabilities offered by the C# programming language, using design patterns for simplifying the parallelism complexity, and avoiding synchronization pains. It also covers the principles of thread affinity, and how to avoid the undesirable side effects related to concurrent programming.

      Chapter 9 takes a closer look at using object-oriented capabilities offered by the C# programming language for achieving great scalability in converting single-threaded algorithms to multithreaded scalable jobs, while avoiding the pains of multithreading. It emphasizes the use of pools and parallelized input/output operations in many ways.

      Chapter 10 focuses on providing a more responsive user interface, using synchronous and asynchronous delegates. It explains how to combine parallelized operations with a precise user interface feedback while avoiding some multithreading pains. It also shows how to combine a pool of threads with a responsive user interface.

      Chapter 11 walks through parallelizing the execution of code, taking advantage of the .NET Parallel Extensions. It explains how to combine different execution techniques with automatically parallelized structures that will be available in Visual Studio 2010. The chapter also shows how to transform a single-threaded imaging library into a parallelized algorithm, and how to combine the .NET Parallel Extensions with a responsive user interface.

      Chapter 12 helps you in creating a whole application from scratch with completely multithreaded code offering a responsive user interface for every event. It demonstrates on how to join all the pieces in a complete application, parallelize the execution as much as possible to offer great scalability, an impressive performance, and an incredibly responsive user interface. It shows how to combine different parallelized tasks with multiple-window UIs, always offering the best possible performance, and the most responsive UI.

      What you need for this book

      You need prior knowledge of C# programming language and .NET Framework, as this book helps developers to find out how to improve their applications' performance and responsiveness. However, you do not need to be a C# guru to understand the book. In order to execute the code included in most chapters you need Visual C# 2005, 2008 or 2010 (CTP). Nevertheless, in order to run the examples in the last two chapters, you need Visual C# 2008 or 2010 (CTP), as you will be using many features available in these new releases.

      You can use Visual C# Express Editions for most of the exercises. However, the Threads Window and many multithreading debugging features are not available in these editions. Thus, you will not be able to run some debugging exercises included in the book. Therefore, you are encouraged to use at least a Trial or Standard Edition, instead of working with the Express Editions.

      You need a computer with at least two cores (dual-core) or two microprocessors installed in order to achieve significant results for most experiences, as we will be focusing on multi-core development. You can run the exercises in single-core microprocessors, but you will not be able to understand the improvements you are achieving.

      Who is this book for

      Whether you are a beginner to working with threads or an old hand who is looking for a reference, this book should be on your desk.

      This book is for people who are interested in working with C#. This book will help you to build scalable, high performance software using parallel programming techniques.

      The book will prove beneficial to C++ programmers who are interested in moving to C#, and to beginner programmers that are interested in learning C#. Students learning introductory threaded programming in C# will also gain benefits from this book.

      Conventions

      In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

      Code words in text are shown as follows: Therefore, the main thread continues with its next statements as if the method RunWorkerAsync() is completed successfully.

      A block of code will be set as follows:

      if (bakCodebreaker.CancellationPending)

      {

      // The user requested to cancel the process

      e.Cancel = true;

      return;

      }

      New terms and important words are introduced in a bold-type font. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in our text like this: the code now disables the Start button and enables the Stop button .

      Note

      Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

      Tip

      Tips and tricks appear like this.

      Practical, hands-on actions and instructions are introduced with a Time For Action heading, and use numbered steps to make it easier to read:

      Time for action — Uploading a document

      Action 1

      Action 2

      Action 3

      When instructions need some extra explanation so that they make sense, they are followed with...

      What just happened?

      ... which explains how the task or instructions you just completed work, so that you learn how Moodle works as you complete useful activities.

      You will also find some other learning aids in the book, including:

      Pop quiz

      These are short questions intended to help you test your own understanding.

      Have a go hero

      These set practical challenges and give you ideas for experimenting with what you have learned.

      Reader feedback

      Feedback from our readers is always welcome. Let us know what you think about this book, what you liked or may have disliked. Reader feedback is important for us to develop titles that you really get the most out of.

      To send us general feedback, simply drop an email to <[email protected]>, making sure to mention the book title in the subject of your message.

      If there is a book that you need and would like to see us publish, please send us a note in the SUGGEST A TITLE form on www.packtpub.com or email .

      If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writing or contributing to a book, see our author guide on www.packtpub.com/authors.

      Customer support

      Now that you are the proud owner of a Packt book, we have a number of things to help you to get the most from your purchase.

      Downloading the example code for the book

      Visit http://www.packtpub.com/files/code/7108_Code.zip to directly download the example code.

      The downloadable files contain instructions on how to use them.

      Errata

      Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our contents, mistakes do happen. If you find a mistake in one of our books—maybe a mistake in text or code—we would be grateful if you would report this to us. By doing this you can save other readers from frustration, and help to improve subsequent versions of this book. If you find any errata, report them by visiting http://www.packtpub.com/support, selecting your book, clicking on the let us know link, and entering the details of your errata. Once your errata are verified, your submission will be accepted and the errata added to the list of existing errata. The existing errata can be viewed by selecting your title from http://www.packtpub.com/support.

      Piracy

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