How to find a concurrency bug – this was the question I asked myself some time ago.
It is always very hard to find a concurrency bug. Mostly you have no idea when it happens or if it is really a concurrency issue or some nasty bit of code. If it is a concurrency issue the question is if the bug is in your code or in a supplied library? Will the problem happen only on multicore processors or on any machine? Besides the technical problem the customer is eager to get a solution and management… we’ll i guess you know the story.
I won’t be able to tell you everything there is to know about concurrency testing – but I’ll show you a way that worked for me in most cases.

Java, Methodology, Testing Concurrency, Java, test, Test Driven Development, Testing

Sometimes I stumble over some new technologies on the internet and I say to myself “this is just too good to be true”. Recently I came across some nice tutorials and videos about the concurrency and coordination runtime of Microsoft. My first thought was that this is one of that “too good to be true” technologies. But then I did a closer look and decided that this technology is worth mentioning on planetgeek.

The Microsoft Concurrency and Coordination Runtime (short CCR) is part of the Microsoft CCR and Decentralized Software Services (DSS) toolkit which is available both for .NET 3.5 SP1 and .NET 3.5 Compact Framework. The mind blowing core of the toolkit is the CCR which has originally evolved from the Microsoft Robotics Platform and Research. Due increase demands of customers Microsoft decided to put the core technology into the toolkit and provide it for the software community.

.NET Arbiter, CCR, Concurrency, Coordination, Dispatcher, Port, Runtime, Toolkit