Advanced Java Programming
(J2EE LC)
Unit -1, Multithreading
Course Objective
To introduce
– Concepts of Threads
– Java Database Connectivity
– Remote Method Invocation
– Reflection API
– Introduction to Java Beans
– Eclipse IDE
– XML parsing
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Day wise Plan
Day 1
– Multithreading
– Java Database Connectivity
Day 2
– Remote Method Invocation
– Reflection API
– Introduction to Java Beans
Day 3
– XML Parsing and introduction to parsers
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Day wise Plan
Day 4 & Day 5
– Project
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Session Plan
Multithreading
– Creating and managing threads
– Priority management
– Thread synchronization
– Thread groups and daemon threads
Java Data Base Connectivity
– JDBC API
– Different drivers
– Set up a connection to a database from Java
– Create a database application
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What are Threads?
A thread is a single sequential flow of control within a program
Facility to allow multiple activities within a single process
Referred as lightweight process
Each thread has its own program counter, stack and local variables
Threads share memory, heap area, files
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Why use Threads?
To perform asynchronous or background processing
Increases the responsiveness of GUI applications
Better utilization of system resources
Simplify program logic when there are multiple independent entities
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Creating the Thread
Two ways:
Extending the Thread class
Implementing the Runnable interface
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The Thread class
Extend the Thread class
Override the run() method
Create an object of the sub class and call the start method to execute the
Thread
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The Thread class
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The Runnable Interface
Useful when the class is already extending another class and needs to
implement mutithreading
Need to implement the run() method
Create a thread object (the worker) and give it a Runnable object (the job)
– public Thread(Runnable target);
Start the thread by calling the start() method
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Thread States
NEWBORN DEAD
start() run() returns or
thread interrupted
notify(), notifyAll()
WAITING RUNNABLE
Sleep interval
expires
yield() or end schedule
of time slice
SLEEPING sleep() wait()
I/O completion RUNNING
BLOCKED
I/O request
NON-RUNNABLE
ALIVE
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Thread scheduling (1 of 2)
There are 2 techniques for thread scheduling
– Pre-emptive and time-sliced
In preemptive scheduling, the thread with a higher priority preempts threads
with lower priority and grabs the CPU
In time-sliced or round robin scheduling, each thread will get some time of the
CPU
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Thread scheduling (2 of 2)
Java runtime system’s thread scheduling algorithm is preemptive but it
depends on the implementation
Solaris is preemptive, Macintosh and Windows are time sliced
In theory, a thread with high priority should get more CPU time, but practically
it may depend on the platform
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Thread Priorities (1 of 2)
Thread priority can be used by the scheduler to decide which thread is to be
run
The priority of a Thread can be set using the method setPriority()
– t.setPriority(7);
The method getPriority() will return the priority of a Thread
– t.getPriority()
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Thread Priorities (2 of 2)
The priority can vary from 1 to 10 or Thread.MIN_PRIORITY to
Thread.MAX_PRIORITY
Normally a Thread will have the priority 5 or Thread.NORM_PRIORITY
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Ensuring time-slicing (1 of 2)
The programmer should write code to ensure that time-slicing occurs even
when the application is running in a preemptive environment
The static method sleep of the Thread class will make a thread sleep for
specified number of milliseconds
Thread.sleep(1000);
A sleeping thread can be interrupted by another thread using the method
interrupt()
When interrupted, sleep method will throw an InterruptedException
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Ensuring time-slicing (2 of 2)
The yield method of the class Thread will give a chance to other threads to run
– t.yield();
The yield() method ensures that the thread behaves like a polite thread and not
a selfish thread
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isAlive() and join() methods
The state of a thread can be queried using the isAlive() method
– Returns true if the thread has been started but not completed its task
– A thread can wait for another thread to finish by using the join() method
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Thread synchronization
In a multithreaded environment 2 or more threads may access a shared
resource
There should be some means to ensure that the shared resource is accessed
by only one thread at a time. This is termed as synchronization
Every object has a mutually exclusive lock called monitor
Only one thread can get the monitor of an object at a time
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Thread synchronization
Synchronization can be ensured by using the keyword synchronized
A method or block of code can be made synchronized
Example
public class Account{
int bankBalance;
public synchronized void creditAccount (int amount) {
bankBalance+= amount;
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Inter-thread communication (1 of 3)
If a thread must wait for the state of an object to change while executing a
synchronized method, it may call wait()
– void wait()
– void wait (long timeout)
The thread calling wait will release the lock on that particular object
The thread will wait till it is notified by another thread owning the lock on the
same object
– void notify()
– void notifyAll()
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Inter-thread communication (2 of 3)
If there are multiple threads waiting on the same object, the notify() method will
notify one among them
The thread that would be notified cannot be predicted
It is safer to call notifyAll(), since it will notify all waiting threads
Code for synchronization should be written carefully else may lead to a dead-
lock situation
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Inter-thread communication (3 of 3)
Example
public class Account {
int bankBalance;
bankBalance;
public synchronized void debitAccount (int amount) {
while((bankBalance - amount)<0) wait();
bankBalance -= amount;
…
}
public synchronized void creditAccount (int amount) {
bankBalance += amount;
notify();
…
}
}
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Thread Groups
Represents a set of threads
Can also contain other thread groups, creating a hierarchy of thread groups
Provides a single-point control on the threads belonging to the thread group
Creation time association is for the life time of the thread
– ThreadGroup threadGroup = new ThreadGroup("MyGroup");
Some of the important methods of ThreadGroup are
– activeCount(), destroy(), setMaxPriority(), setDaemon()
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Daemon Thread
Daemon Thread is a thread that will run in the background, serving other
threads
So, a program can stop, if all non-daemon threads have finished execution
A thread can be made a daemon by calling the method setDaemon(true)
before calling its start() method
Can query thread status using the method isDaemon()
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Summary
Multithreading
– Creating and managing threads
– Priority management
– Thread synchronization
– Thread groups and daemon threads
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