How can I use the same thread pool implementation for different tasks?

Question

Dear java programmers,
I have written a class which submits Callable tasks to a thread pool while illustrating the progress of the overall procedure in a JFrame with a progress bar and text area. I want to use this class for several applications in which the process and consequently the Callable object varies. I simplified my code and looks like this:
        threadPoolSize = 4;
        String[] chainArray = predock.PrepareDockEnvironment();
        int chainArrayLength = chainArray.length;
        String score = "null";
        ExecutorService executor = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(threadPoolSize);
        CompletionService<String> referee = new ExecutorCompletionService<String>(executor);
        for (int i = 0; i < threadPoolSize - 1; i++) {
            System.out.println("Submiting new thread for chain " + chainArray);
referee.submit(new Parser(chainArray[i]));
for (int chainIndex = threadPoolSize; chainIndex < chainArrayLength; chainIndex++) {
try {
System.out.println("Submiting new thread for chain " + chainArray[chainIndex]);
referee.submit(new Parser(chainArray[i]));
score = referee.poll(10, TimeUnit.MINUTES).get();
System.out.println("The next score is " + score);
executor.shutdown();
int index = chainArrayLength - threadPoolSize;
score = "null";
while (!executor.isTerminated()) {
score = referee.poll(10, TimeUnit.MINUTES).get();
System.out.println("The next score is " + score);
index++;
My question is how can I replace Parser object with something changeable, so that I can set it accordingly whenever I call this method to conduct a different task?
thanks,
Tom                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Answer 1

OK lets's start from the beginning with more details. I have that class called ProgressGUI which opens a small window with 2 buttons ("start" and "stop"), a progress bar and a text area. It also implements a thread pool to conducts the analysis of multiple files.
My main GUI, which is much bigger that the latter, is in a class named GUI. There are 3 types of operations which implement the thread pool, each one encapsulated in a different class (SMAP, Dock, EP). The user can set the necessary parameters and when clicking on a button, opens the ProgressGUI window which depicts the progress of the respective operation at each time step.
The code I posted is taken from ProgressGui.class and at the moment, in order to conduct one of the supported operations, I replace "new Parser(chainArray)" with either "new SMAP(chainArray[i])", "new Dock(chainArray[i])", "new EP(chainArray[i])". It would be redundant to have exactly the same thread pool implementation (shown in my first post) written 3 different times, when the only thing that needs to be changed is "new Parser(chainArray[i])".
What I though at first was defining an abstract method named MainOperation and replace "new Parser(chainArray[i])" with:
new Callable() {
  public void call() {
    MainOperation();
});For instance when one wants to use SMAP.class, he would initialize MainOperation as:
public abstract String MainOperation(){
    return new SMAP(chainArray));
That's the most reasonable explanation I can give, but apparently an abstract method cannot be called anywhere else in the abstract class (ProgressGUI.class in my case).
Firstly it should be Callable not Runnable.Can you explain why? You are just running a method and ignoring any result or exception. However, it makes little difference.ExecutorCompletionService takes Future objects as input, that's why it should be Callable and not Runnable. The returned value is a score (String).
Secondly how can I change that runMyNewMethod() on demand, can I do it by defining it as abstract?How do you want to determine which method to run?The user will click on the appropriate button and the GUI will initialize (perhaps implicitly) the body of the abstract method MainOperation accordingly. Don't worry about that, this is not the point.
Edited by: tevang2 on Dec 28, 2008 7:18 AM