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Executor interface

The java.util.concurrent package defines three executor interfaces:

• Executor, a simple interface that supports launching new tasks;
• ExecutorService, a subinterface of Executor, which adds features that help manage the lifecycle, both of the individual tasks and of the executor itself;
• ScheduledExecutorService, a subinterface of ExecutorService, supports future and/or periodic execution of tasks.

Typically, variables that refer to executor objects are declared as one of these three interface types, not with an executor class type.

The Executor interface

The Executor interface provides a single method, execute, designed to be a drop-in replacement for a common thread-creation idiom. If r is a Runnable object, and e is an Executor object you can replace:

(new Thread(r)).start();

with:

e.execute(r);

However, the definition of execute is less specific. The low-level idiom creates a new thread and launches it immediately. Depending on the Executor implementation, execute may do the same thing, but is more likely to use an existing worker thread to run r, or to place r in a queue to wait for a worker thread to become available.

The executor implementations in java.util.concurrent are designed to make full use of the more advanced ExecutorService and ScheduledExecutorService interfaces, although they also work with the base Executor interface.

The ExecutorService Interface

The ExecutorService interface supplements execute with a similar, but more versatile submit method. Like execute, submit accepts Runnable objects, but also accepts Callable objects, which allow the task to return a value. The submit method returns a Future object, which is used to retrieve the Callable return value and to manage the status of both Callable and Runnable tasks.

ExecutorService also provides methods for submitting large collections of Callable objects. Finally, ExecutorService provides a number of methods for managing the shutdown of the executor. To support immediate shutdown, tasks should handle interrupts correctly.

The ScheduledExecutorService Interface

The ScheduledExecutorService interface supplements the methods of its parent ExecutorService with schedule, which executes a Runnable or Callable task after a specified delay. In addition, the interface defines scheduleAtFixedRate and scheduleWithFixedDelay, which executes specified tasks repeatedly, at defined intervals.

ExecutorService vs. Fork/Join

After the release of Java 7, many developers decided that the ExecutorService framework should be replaced by the fork/join framework. This is not always the right decision, however. Despite the simplicity of usage and the frequent performance gains associated with fork/join, there is also a reduction in the amount of developer control over concurrent execution.

ExecutorService gives the developer the ability to control the number of generated threads and the granularity of tasks which should be executed by separate threads. The best use case for ExecutorService is the processing of independent tasks, such as transactions or requests according to the scheme “one thread for one task.”

In contrast, according to Oracle’s documentation, fork/join was designed to speed up work which can be broken into smaller pieces recursively.

Links

https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/essential/concurrency/exinter.html
https://www.baeldung.com/java-executor-service-tutorial
http://tutorials.jenkov.com/java-util-concurrent/executorservice.html

credit goes to @swayangjit