Concurrent Programming in Java(TM): Design Principles and Pattern (2nd Edition) (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Concurrent Programming in Java, 2nd Edition surveys a wide field of research in parallelism and concurrency and shows how to do more with multithreading in Java with dozens of patterns and design tips. Written for the advanced Java developer, this book offers a comprehensive tour of leading-edge thinking about parallel coding processes.

Within the dozens of techniques and tips offered here, this book accomplishes at least two goals. First, it shows how concurrency is implemented by default within Java, with material on how built-in features (like the synchronized keyword and its memory model) can be expected to perform when dealing with multiple threads. Naturally, Java threads themselves are also covered, including priorities, scheduling, and the like.

Much of this book looks at ways to improve performance of concurrent code beyond the simple default strategies. After defining criteria for measuring concurrent code (such as safety and "liveness," a measure of running live threads effectively), the book presents dozens of techniques for letting threads work together safely. For the working Java programmer, coverage of patterns that have been implemented in the downloadable java.concurrency package will be the most immediately useful. (Within this nearly encyclopedic survey, short code snippets are used for every pattern and concept.)

Though theoretical at times, this book offers plenty of ideas and sample code to get you started thinking of ways to improve multithreaded code.

Impressively comprehensive, Concurrent Programming in Java offers a veritable bible of techniques for doing two things at once with threads in Java. It's a worthwhile guide to the state-of-the-art strategies for improving the performance of your Java threads. --Richard Dragan

Topics covered: Threads and concurrency in Java, design considerations (safety, liveness, and performance), Before/After Patterns, layering, adapters, immutability and synchronization, deadlock, resource ordering, the Java Memory Model and concurrency, using the java.concurrency package, confinement, refactoring for concurrency, mutexes, read-write locks, recovering from failure, notifications, semaphores, latches, exchanges, transactions, one-way messages, worker threads, polling and event-driven I/O, parallelism techniques (fork/join, computation trees, and barriers), Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP).

Product Description

In this second edition, you will find thoroughly updated coverage of the Java(tm) 2 platform and new or expanded coverage of:

* Memory model * Cancellation * Portable parallel programming * Utility classes for concurrency control

The Java platform provides a broad and powerful set of APIs, tools, and technologies. One of its most powerful capabilities is the built-in support for threads. This makes concurrent programming an attractive yet challenging option for programmers using the Java programming language.

This book shows readers how to use the Java platform's threading model more precisely by helping them to understand the patterns and tradeoffs associated with concurrent programming.

You will learn how to initiate, control, and coordinate concurrent activities using the class java.lang.Thread, the keywords synchronized and volatile, and the methods wait, notify, and notifyAll. In addition, you will find detailed coverage of all aspects of concurrent programming, including such topics as confinement and synchronization, deadlocks and conflicts, state-dependent action control, asynchronous message passing and control flow, coordinated interaction, and structuring web-based and computational services.

The book targets intermediate to advanced programmers interested in mastering the complexities of concurrent programming. Taking a design pattern approach, the book offers standard design techniques for creating and implementing components that solve common concurrent programming challenges. The numerous code examples throughout help clarify the subtleties of the concurrent programming concepts discussed.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR; 2 edition (November 4, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201310090
• ISBN-13: 978-0201310092
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #75,550 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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• This item is part of The Java Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, January 30, 2000

By	Eric A. Snell - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Simply a great book on concurrent programming in Java. This book and the class library the author provides are an awesome combination. While some of the information is Java specific, this book is much more about concurrent programming in general.

The author explains the primitive concurrency mechanisms provided in Java, such as Threads and Monitors, and then quickly moves on to higher level abstractions that embody many of the patterns found in multi-threaded applications. By encapsulating these, sometimes complex, patterns in reusable classes, the author shows how to maintain the separation of concerns between the concurrent aspects of the code and the logic of the task at hand.

This book contains a thorough discussion of the topic and extensive code - both examples and a reusable class library. This is a must read for every Java developer.

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Everything you need to know about concurrency in Java, April 11, 2003

By	Bob Carpenter (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

Concurrent programming is fraught with peril. It's much more complex than sequential programming in every meaningful way from specification to unit testing. But if you want to do it right, meaning balancing liveness with safety for efficient and robust multi-threaded applications, you need Doug Lea's "Concurrent Programming in Java". Especially if you need to design an extensible framework with concurrency; well-known examples of such frameworks incluce Swing, most of java.net, and just about every aspect of J2EE.

Lea provides an intense introduction at the level of an advanced undergraduate course. It's fairly academic in tone, because he takes the time to provide thorough definitions and detailed examples. As a former academic who now designs and programs for a living, this is just what I was looking for. But don't buy this book expecting a cookbook of code to cut and paste. It's much more about providing you the fundamental tools to design your own concurrent classes, applications and frameworks.

Lea presupposes the user is fluent in Java, knows a bit about concurrent programming patterns involving mutexes, semaphores, etc, and is familiar with the basic object-oriented design patterns. If you're not up to speed in these areas, the path I followed was reading the following:

* Lewis's "Threads Primer" (warning: it's C/unix-based),

* Gosling and Joy's "Java Programming Language",

* Bloch's "Effective Java", and

* Gamma et al.'s "Design Patterns".

Even if you don't buy this book, consider using Lea's concurrent.util package available from his web site. It provides solid implementations of everything from simple mutexes to concurrent read-single write wrappers for Java collections (Sun's own wrappers simply synchronize all methods, which suffers reduced liveness compared to CRSW designs). And it's both elegantly designed and thoroughly javadoc-ed.

The first edition was great, and I've just finished reading the second edition cover to cover and it has taken my understanding of concurrent design to a new level. Just be warned that this book's not for novices or hobbyists; it's for programmers who need to design the guts of concurrent systems the "right" way and then implement them in Java, especially for extensible frameworks.

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must-read for serious programmers, June 27, 2000

By A Customer

Concurrency is difficult to get right. If you're going to be doing concurrent programming - in any language, really - then you should have this book in your toolchest. Even if you've been doing multi-threaded programming for years, CPJ is likely to make you better at it. The book represents the latest thinking and advances in concurrency, and judging from the increase in scope over the first edition, it would appear that the state of the art is evolving rapidly.

The second edition is a big improvement over the first: it's better-organized, better-written, and covers much more ground. It also has better treatment of Mr. Lea's "util.concurrent" package, a set of useful synchronization classes that will undoubtedly find their way into the Java platform at some point.

This is a hard book to read, which is undoubtedly why it gets so many negative reviews from confused readers. You can't just browse through it in an hour and then expect to be able to write a multi-threaded web server. It covers enough material to fill a grad-level course in CS, and it helps to have a CS degree or the equivalent to get the most out of it. There are probably much better books out there if you want to get "up and running" with threads quickly. If you ever hope to do anything reasonably complex with threading, though, you should get this book and study it carefully.