Re: Threads having datamember as HashMap

From:
Lew <lew@lewscanon.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.java.programmer
Date:
Tue, 23 Nov 2010 08:01:50 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID:
<02e58c37-de6e-4cb3-8e62-09942352d8dd@j25g2000yqa.googlegroups.com>
vivek_12315 wrote:

I am producing a scenario, where say 10 Threads have their 10 private
HashMaps .... And T[i] just modifies its own copy of H[i] .....

I hope this type of model shall work (leaving the argument that
"HashMap is not ThreadSafe"

Right ?


There are thread-safe Maps in the API.

Think in terms of interfaces, really types, and not concrete classes
as you're doing. You need a thread-safe HashMap, you say? Why a
HashMap and not some other Map, then? There are two easy ones:
'Collections.synchronizedMap( someMap )' and
'java.util.concurrent.ConcurrentHashMap'. They support different
degrees of thread safety.

<http://download.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/util/
Collections.html#synchronizedMap(java.util.Map)>
<http://download.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/util/concurrent/
ConcurrentHashMap.html>

The easiest thread safety is not to share data, as you stated in your
post. Local variables tend to be thread-isolated, as for example:

  public void foo()
  {
    Map <Foo, Bar> map = new HashMap <Foo, Bar> ();
    // use 'map' without exposing it to any other threads
  }

'ThreadLocal' is effective but trickier.
<http://download.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/lang/
ThreadLocal.html>
Its purpose is to make data "globally" available "locally" to a
thread, loosely speaking, that is, to have a thread-contained
reference with wider scope or longer lifetime than a local variable.
Personally I avoid 'ThreadLocal' references, perhaps foolishly.

Immutable references to immutable instances are thread-safe as long as
their initialization /happens-before/ any thread's attempt to read
them.

Robert Klemme wrote:

If you are interested in the topic I recommend Doug Lea's book.


Also Brian Goetz's, et al. Mr. Goetz is also a frequent writer on
concurrency topics in IBM Developerworks and other places.

--
Lew

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