Concurrent Programming in Java

1.2 Objects and Concurrency

Follow-ups

Readings and Resources

Concurrent programming

• Andrews, Gregory. Foundations of Multithreaded, Parallel, and Distributed Programming, Addison-Wesley, 1999. This is an expanded update of Andrews's Concurrent Programming: Principles and Practice, Benjamin Cummings, 1991. (see also Book supplement web site.)
• Ben-Ari, M. Principles of Concurrent and Distributed Programming, Prentice Hall, 1990.
• Bernstein, Arthur, and Philip Lewis. Concurrency in Programming and Database Systems, Jones and Bartlett, 1993.
• Burns, Alan, and Geoff Davis. Concurrent Programming, Addison-Wesley, 1993.
• Bustard, David, John Elder, and Jim Welsh. Concurrent Program Structures, Prentice Hall, 1988.
• Schneider, Fred. On Concurrent Programming, Springer-Verlag, 1997.

The concurrency constructs found in the Java programming language have their roots in similar constructs first described by C. A. R. Hoare and Per Brinch Hansen. See Hoare's original paper , as well as papers by them and others in following collections:

• Dahl, Ole-Johan, Edsger Dijkstra, and C. A. R. Hoare (eds.). Structured Programming, Academic Press, 1972.
• Gehani, Narain, and Andrew McGettrick (eds.). Concurrent Programming, Addison-Wesley, 1988.

A comparative survey of how some of these constructs are defined and supported across different languages and systems may be found in:

• Buhr, Peter, Michel Fortier, and Michael Coffin. ``Monitor Classification'', ACM Computing Surveys, March, 1995.

Concurrent object-oriented, object-based or module-based languages include Simula, Modula-3, Mesa, Ada, Orca, Sather, and Euclid. More information on these languages can be found in their manuals, as well as in:

• Birtwistle, Graham, Ole-Johan Dahl, Bjorn Myhrtag, and Kristen Nygaard. Simula Begin, Auerbach Press, 1973.
• Burns, Alan, and Andrew Wellings. Concurrency in Ada, Cambridge University Press, 1995.
• Holt, R. C. Concurrent Euclid, the Unix System, and Tunis, Addison-Wesley, 1983.
• Nelson, Greg (ed.). Systems Programming with Modula-3, Prentice Hall, 1991.
• Stoutamire, David, and Stephen Omohundro. The Sather/pSather 1.1 Specification, Technical Report, University of California at Berkeley, 1996.

Books taking different approaches to concurrency in the Java programming language include:

• Hartley, Stephen. Concurrent Programming using Java, Oxford University Press, 1998. This takes an operating systems approach to concurrency. (See also Stephen Hartley's home page.)
• Holub, Allen. Taming Java Threads, Apress, 1999. This collects the author's columns on threads in the JavaWorld online magazine. (See also Allen Holub's web site.)
• Lewis, Bil. Multithreaded Programming in Java, Prentice Hall, 1999. (See also Bil's web site.) This presents a somewhat lighter treatment of several topics discussed in this book, and provides closer tie-ins with POSIX threads.
• Magee, Jeff, and Jeff Kramer. Concurrency: State Models and Java Programs, Wiley, 1999. This provides a stronger emphasis on modeling and analysis. (See also the book's web site.)

Most books, articles, and manuals on systems programming using threads concentrate on the details of those on particular operating systems or thread packages. See:

• Butenhof, David. Programming with POSIX Threads, Addison-Wesley, 1997. This provides the most complete discussions of the POSIX thread library and how to use it.
• Lewis, Bil, and Daniel Berg. Multithreaded Programming with Pthreads, Prentice Hall, 1998.
• Norton, Scott, and Mark Dipasquale. Thread Time, Prentice Hall, 1997.

Most texts on operating systems and systems programming describe the design and construction of underlying support mechanisms for language-level thread and synchronization constructs. See, for example:

• Hanson, David. C Interfaces and Implementations, Addison-Wesley, 1996.
• Silberschatz, Avi and Peter Galvin. Operating Systems Concepts, Addison-Wesley, 1994.
• Tanenbaum, Andrew. Modern Operating Systems, Prentice Hall, 1992.

Models

• van Leeuwen, Jan (ed.). Handbook of Theoretical Computer Science, Volume B, MIT Press, 1990.

An eclectic (and still fresh-sounding) presentation of models, associated programming techniques, and design patterns, illustrated using diverse languages and systems, is:

• Filman, Robert, and Daniel Friedman. Coordinated Computing. McGraw-Hill, 1984. See also online version.

There are several experimental concurrent OO languages based on active objects, most notably the family of Actor languages. See:

• Agha, Gul. ACTORS: A Model of Concurrent Computation in Distributed Systems, MIT Press, 1986.

A more extensive survey of object-oriented approaches to concurrency can be found in:

• Briot, Jean-Pierre, Rachid Guerraoui, and Klaus-Peter Lohr. "Concurrency and Distribution in Object-Oriented Programming", Computing Surveys, 1998.

Research papers on object-oriented models, systems and languages can be found in proceedings of OO conferences including ECOOP, OOPSLA, COOTS, TOOLS, and ISCOPE, as well as concurrency conferences such as CONCUR and journals such as IEEE Concurrency. Also, the following collections contain chapters surveying many approaches and issues:

• Agha, Gul, Peter Wegner, and Aki Yonezawa (eds.). Research Directions in Concurrent Object-Oriented Programming, MIT Press, 1993.
• Briot, Jean-Pierre, Jean-Marc Geib and Akinori Yonezawa (eds.). Object Based Parallel and Distributed Computing, LNCS 1107, Springer Verlag, 1996.
• Guerraoui, Rachid, Oscar Nierstrasz, and Michel Riveill (eds.). Object-Based Distributed Processing, LNCS 791, Springer-Verlag, 1993.
• Nierstrasz, Oscar, and Dennis Tsichritzis (eds.). Object-Oriented Software Composition, Prentice Hall, 1995.

Distributed systems

• Barbosa, Valmir. An Introduction to Distributed Algorithms. Morgan Kaufman, 1996.
• Birman, Kenneth and Robbert von Renesse. Reliable Distributed Computing with the Isis Toolkit, IEEE Press, 1994.
• Coulouris, George, Jean Dollimore, and Tim Kindberg. Distributed Systems: Concepts and Design, Addison-Wesley, 1994.
• Lynch, Nancy. Distributed Algorithms, Morgan Kaufman, 1996.
• Mullender, Sape (ed.), Distributed Systems, Addison-Wesley, 1993.
• Raynal, Michel. Distributed Algorithms and Protocols, Wiley, 1988.

• OMG.
• Distributed Coalition.
• CWI Distributed Algorithms and Systems page.

For details about distributed programming using RMI, see:

• Arnold, Ken, Bryan O'Sullivan, Robert Scheifler, Jim Waldo, and Ann Wollrath. The JiniTM Specification, Addison-Wesley, 1999.

Real-time programming

• Burns, Alan, and Andy Wellings. Real-Time Systems and Programming Languages, Addison-Wesley, 1997. This book illustrates real-time programming in Ada, occam, and C, and includes a recommended account of priority inversion problems and solutions.
• Gomaa, Hassan. Software Design Methods for Concurrent and Real-Time Systems, Addison-Wesley, 1993.
• Levi, Shem-Tov and Ashok Agrawala. Real-Time System Design, McGraw-Hill, 1990. Selic, Bran, Garth Gullekson, and Paul Ward. Real-Time Object-Oriented Modeling, Wiley, 1995.
• Real-Time patterns page