ThreadPoolExecutor pros / cons and alternatives.

Question

Folks,
I was looking at the ThreadPoolExecutor documentation: http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/java/util/concurrent/ThreadPoolExecutor.html
Is ThreadPoolExecutor the most efficient dispatching system ?. Are there any other Classes in Java that can be used to accomplish a similar task, i.e executing asynchronous tasks.
Also please provide me from your experience if there are pros and cons using alternatives to threadpools.
_ddt

Answer 1

Thanks for your prompt response!.
We are currently using ThreadPoolExecutor to execute a bunch of asynchronous tasks, but the performance of our application degraded very SEVERELY :(.
When run through a NetBeans profiler, we see that most of the time is being spent in context switching.
The Documentation for ThreadPoolExecutor Reads:
To be useful across a wide range of contexts, this class provides many adjustable parameters and extensibility hooks. However, programmers are urged to use the more convenient Executors factory methods Executors.newCachedThreadPool() (unbounded thread pool, with automatic thread reclamation), Executors.newFixedThreadPool(int) (fixed size thread pool) and Executors.newSingleThreadExecutor() (single background thread), that preconfigure settings for the most common usage scenarios. Otherwise, use the following guide when manually configuring and tuning this class:
So is it better to use the Executor classes ?.
_ddt