Visual Studio® 2010 All-in-One For Dummies®

Chapter 8. Using Threads and Timers

In This Chapter

• Dividing your work with threads and thread pools

• Queuing up your work using the .NET framework thread pool

• Keeping things on schedule with timers

In the early days of software, applications were pretty simple. Computers could typically run one application at a time so if you were typing a document and wanted to update items on a spreadsheet, you had to quit your word-processing application and then launch your spreadsheet application. Software applications were also pretty simple. They just waited for you to enter a command, and then they'd execute the command and return to wait for you to enter another command.

Today, users demand much more from their software. Users expect software to be responsive no matter what. If you click a button to add an item to a database in a faraway location, users expect to move the window or perform some other task while the database request is still processing. Also, gone are the days where getting updates to your software required sending a request to the manufacturer and getting a set of disks in the mail with the latest version of the software. Today, most software applications connect to the network and periodically check for updates. If the manufacturer has updates to your software, the software itself retrieves them across the network and updates the application, even while you're using it.

How is it that a software application can send a request to update a database in a faraway location, download ...