Illustrated C# 2012

C H A P T E R  20

Introduction to Asynchronous Programming

• What Is Asynchrony?
• The Structure of the async/await Feature
• What Is An async Method?
• Async Operations in GUI Programs
• Using an async Lambda Expression
• A Full GUI Example
• The BackgroundWorker Class
• Parallel Loops
• Other Asynchronous Programming Patterns
• BeginInvoke and EndInvoke
• Timers

What Is Asynchrony?

When you start a program, the system creates a new process in memory. A process is the set of resources that comprise a running program. These include the virtual address space, file handles, and a host of other things required for the program to run.

Inside the process, the system creates a kernel object, called a thread, which represents the actual executing program. (Thread