Managed Threading Basics

The first five topics of this section are designed to help you determine when to use managed threading, and to explain some basic features. For information on classes that provide additional features, see Threading Objects and Features and Overview of Synchronization Primitives.

The rest of the topics in this section cover advanced topics, including the interaction of managed threading with the Windows operating system.

Note

In the .NET Framework version 4, the Task Parallel Library and PLINQ provide APIs for task and data parallelism in multi-threaded programs. For more information, see Parallel Programming in the .NET Framework.

In This Section

• Threads and Threading
  Discusses the advantages and drawbacks of multiple threads, and outlines the scenarios in which you might create threads or use thread pool threads.

• Exceptions in Managed Threads
  Describes the behavior of unhandled exceptions in threads for different versions of the .NET Framework, in particular the situations in which they result in termination of the application.

• Synchronizing Data for Multithreading
  Describes strategies for synchronizing data in classes that will be used with multiple threads.

• Managed Thread States
  Describes the basic thread states, and explains how to detect whether a thread is running.

• Foreground and Background Threads
  Explains the differences between foreground and background threads.

• Managed and Unmanaged Threading in Windows
  Discusses the relationship between managed and unmanaged threading, lists managed equivalents for Windows threading APIs, and discusses the interaction of COM apartments and managed threads.

• Thread.Suspend, Garbage Collection, and Safe Points
  Describes thread suspension and garbage collection.

• Thread Local Storage: Thread-Relative Static Fields and Data Slots
  Describes thread-relative storage mechanisms.

Reference

• Thread
  Provides reference documentation for the Thread class, which represents a managed thread, whether it came from unmanaged code or was created in a managed application.

• BackgroundWorker
  Provides a safe way to implement multithreading in conjunction with user-interface objects.

Related Sections

• Overview of Synchronization Primitives
  Describes the managed classes used to synchronize the activities of multiple threads.

• Managed Threading Best Practices
  Describes common problems with multithreading and strategies for avoiding problems.

• Parallel Programming in the .NET Framework
  Describes the Task Parallel Library and PLINQ, which greatly simplify the work of creating asynchronous and multi-threaded .NET Framework applications.