Other Classes and Interfaces in java.util.concurrent

The Runnable interface provides only the most basic functionality for multithreaded programming. In fact, this interface has several limitations. Suppose a Runnable encounters a problem and tries to throw a checked exception. The run method is not declared to throw any exceptions, so the problem must be handled within the Runnablethe exception cannot be passed to the calling thread. Now suppose a Runnable is performing a long calculation and the application wants to retrieve the result of that calculation. The run method cannot return a value, so the application must use shared data to pass the value back to the calling thread. This also involves the overhead of synchronizing access to the data. The developers of the new concurrency APIs in J2SE 5.0 recognized these limitations and created a new interface to fix them. The Callable interface (package java.util.concurrent) declares a single method named call. This interface is designed to be similar to the Runnable interfaceallowing an action to be performed concurrently in a separate threadbut the call method allows the thread to return a value or to throw a checked exception.

An application that creates a Callable likely wants to run the Callable concurrently with other Runnables and Callables. The ExecutorService interface provides method submit, which will execute a Callable passed in as its argument. The submit method returns an object of type Future (package java.util.concurrent), which is an interface that represents the executing Callable. The Future interface declares method get to return the result of the Callable and provides other methods to manage a Callable's execution.