ARCast – Threading and Async IO with Jeff Richter

The Discussion

• 

  Hi Jeff (& Ron ),

   

  I found the show very interesting, and I hope you have time for a few questions.

  1) So to call a web service using async I/O I just use one of the Begin methods, and thats it? I dont have to launch a thread or anything?

  2) What do I do for other resources like Files or a COM method call?
  
  Best regards,
  Niels Tindbæk

• 

  1) That's right. Just call a BeginXxx method. Do not launch your own thread.
  2) The FileStream class offers BeginRead/BeginWrite methods. Use these. For COM methods, you must call them synchronously; or you can spawn a separate thread which calls them synchronously but to the rest of the app it looks like they're being called asynchronously.
  

• 

  Hi Jeff,
  
  As per your article on msdn mag every object has a syncBlockIndex that is used when we lock an object during thread sync, from another webcast on msdn about CLR internals I remember you saying that the same syncBlockIndex is used by garbage collector to mark objects as accessible, what happen when an object is locked and garbage collector runs?
  
  Thanks,
  Navneet