Book Image

Mastering Concurrency Programming with Java 9 - Second Edition

By : Javier Fernández González
Book Image

Mastering Concurrency Programming with Java 9 - Second Edition

By: Javier Fernández González

Overview of this book

Concurrency programming allows several large tasks to be divided into smaller sub-tasks, which are further processed as individual tasks that run in parallel. Java 9 includes a comprehensive API with lots of ready-to-use components for easily implementing powerful concurrency applications, but with high flexibility so you can adapt these components to your needs. The book starts with a full description of the design principles of concurrent applications and explains how to parallelize a sequential algorithm. You will then be introduced to Threads and Runnables, which are an integral part of Java 9's concurrency API. You will see how to use all the components of the Java concurrency API, from the basics to the most advanced techniques, and will implement them in powerful real-world concurrency applications. The book ends with a detailed description of the tools and techniques you can use to test a concurrent Java application, along with a brief insight into other concurrency mechanisms in JVM.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Dedication
Preface

Synchronization mechanisms


Synchronization of tasks is the coordination between those tasks to get the desired results. In concurrent applications, we can have two kinds of synchronizations:

  • Process synchronization: We use this kind of synchronization when we want to control the order of execution of tasks. For example, a task must wait for the finalization of other tasks before it starts its execution.
  • Data synchronization: We use this kind of synchronization when two or more tasks access the same memory object. In this case, you have to protect the access in the write operations to that object. If you don't do this, you could have a data race condition where the final results of a program vary from one execution to another.

The Java Concurrency API provides mechanisms that allow you to implement both types of synchronization. The most basic synchronization mechanism provided by the Java language is the synchronized keyword. This keyword can be applied to a method or to a block of code. In...