Thread - GUI vs Database

Question

Folks
I have a performance intensive task within my init method (the database part). I would like to seperate this from the loading of the GUI... therefore I am thinking threads.
I am vaguely familar with the two thread options that exist. I dont particularly wish to create a specific class for this. Therefore I am thinking towards implementing Runnable option.
The question is, doing this method I overide the run() method. How do I put the building of the GUI in one thread and the database performance in another...
Thanks for you help.

Answer 1

One clarification question: If I implement the code above,
hence put the database operations in a thread and leave the
init code untouched would I then be effectively running two
threads. OR would I need to specifically put the init()
method AND database operations in TWO seperate threads.Answer: the "main" thread (that you do not explicitly create) will do the init code. The other thread that you do explicitly create, will do the database work. In other words, take your existing init() code, only insert the thread-starting code at the top.
class YourApplet extends Applet
   public void init()
      // before doing anything else, get the worker going
      DatabaseWorkerThread databaseWorkerThread = new DatabaseWorkerThread();
      databaseWorkerThread.start();
      // get the gui ready
      // here the main thread will do all of the gui work as normal
      // (meanwhile, the other thread is working hard on the database stuff, but
      //  we never know what progress it has made at any point; at end of init,
      //  we don't know whether it is done or not -- or even started for that matter)
   } // end of init method
   class DatabaseWorkerThread extends Thread
      public void run()
         // the database work
   } // end of inner class DatabaseWorkerThread
} // end of class YourApplet(My choice to extend thread rather than implementing Runnable makes no difference in the reasonable simple case of this short example.)
/Mel