101 Microsoft® Visual Basic® .NET Applications

Application #79. Use Thread Pooling

The ability to use threads within Visual Basic has long been a requested feature because threads allow you to create a multitasking application that runs smoothly. However, if an application requires a design where threads must be constantly created and destroyed, performance might actually suffer. Thread pooling is a technique that streamlines the performance of these types of applications. When a thread is no longer needed, rather than being terminated, the thread is saved to a pool where it can be reused later. Conceptually, this is similar to database connection pooling. Thread pooling improves performance because it eliminates the overhead of repeatedly creating and destroying threads.

This sample application ...