Question

What is the role of the Task Parallel Library (TPL) in ASP.NET threading? Can you provide an example of how to use the TPL in a typical application?

Answer 1

The Task Parallel Library (TPL) in ASP.NET threading simplifies parallelism and concurrency by providing high-level abstractions for executing tasks concurrently. It enables developers to write efficient, scalable, and responsive applications without dealing with low-level thread management.

A typical use case of TPL is processing a large dataset or performing computationally intensive operations. For example, consider an application that calculates the factorial of multiple numbers simultaneously:

using System;

using System.Threading.Tasks;

class Program

{

static void Main()

{

int[] numbers = { 10, 20, 30 };

Parallel.ForEach(numbers, number =>

{

long factorial = CalculateFactorial(number);

Console.WriteLine($"Factorial of {number} is {factorial}");

});

}

static long CalculateFactorial(int n)

{

if (n == 0) return 1;

return n * CalculateFactorial(n - 1);

}

}

using System;
using System.Threading.Tasks;

class Program
{
    static void Main()
    {
        int[] numbers = { 10, 20, 30 };
        Parallel.ForEach(numbers, number => 
        {
            long factorial = CalculateFactorial(number);
            Console.WriteLine($"Factorial of {number} is {factorial}");
        });
    }

    static long CalculateFactorial(int n)
    {
        if (n == 0) return 1;
        return n * CalculateFactorial(n - 1);
    }
}

In this example, 

Parallel.ForEach

 from TPL is used to calculate factorials concurrently, improving performance on multi-core processors. The library handles task scheduling, load balancing, and synchronization, allowing developers to focus on implementing the core logic.