Java Threads, 3rd Edition

Chapter 11. Task Scheduling

In the previous chapter, we examined an interesting aspect of threads. Before we used a thread pool, we were concerned with creating, controlling, and communicating between threads. With a thread pool, we were concerned with the task that we wanted to execute. Using an executor allowed us to focus on our program’s logic instead of writing a lot of thread-related code.

In this chapter, we examine this idea in another context. Task schedulers give us the opportunity to execute particular tasks at a fixed point in time in the future (or, more correctly, after a fixed point in time in the future). They also allow us to set up repeated execution of tasks. Once again, they free us from many of the low-level details of thread programming: we create a task, hand it off to a task scheduler, and don’t worry about the rest.

Java provides different kinds of task schedulers. Timer classes execute tasks (perhaps repeatedly) at a point in the future. These classes provide a basic task scheduling feature. J2SE 5.0 has a new, more flexible task scheduler that can be used to handle many tasks more effectively than the timer classes. In this chapter, we’ll look into all of these classes.

Overview of Task Scheduling

Interestingly, this is not the first time that we have been concerned with when a task is to be executed. Previously, we’ve just considered the timing as part of the task. We’ve seen tools that allow threads to wait for specific periods of time. Here is a quick ...