Java Threads Can Be Very Useful Building Blocks

Abstract

A thread is often considered as a very delicate feature that introduces more troubles than solutions in a development. Actually, this idea is not correct. In this tutorial, we will show that threads can be friendly even in simple applications, provided they are embedded in the right communication structures and are used to separate the data structures from the behavior of an application. In that case, they simplify debugging and maintenance. In the presentation, we will introduce the basic concurrency concepts offered by Java and discuss several typical uses of threads. In particular, we will show how to establish a communication between the threads and the GUI (graphical user interface) implemented with the Swing library, how to handle simultaneously GUI, client and server accesses in the same application and finally how to code the various UML diagrams that define the behavior of an interactive application.