Question

I have noticed that as the database of my application has grown, the time taken to return results has also increased. In the beginning this was negligible because it was such a small amount of time to return the data source.

Now I am at the point where it temporarily makes the UI unresponsive for a couple of seconds, but I would like to create background workers to do these tasks.

The problem with creating these, is that there are around 9 buttons that would need a background worker and all they do is call a different method in the DLL. Is there any way to use a common method to create these background workers using the API for background workers or should I create an Enum that corresponds to each button and is a parameter taken in by the method that constructs the background worker. Thus meaning I could use a simple switch to execute whatever method from the DLL I choose?

Sample Code:

    void bg_DoWorkImports(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e)
    {
        BackgroundWorker worker = sender as BackgroundWorker;

        try
        {
            e.Result = EngineBllUtility.GetNotImportedFiles(connectionString);
        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
            MessageBox.Show(ex.Message);
        }
    }

    void bg_RunWorkerCompletedImports(object sender, RunWorkerCompletedEventArgs e)
    {
        DataSet temp = (DataSet)e.Result;
        if (e.Result != null)
        {
            importFileGridView.DataSource = temp.Tables[0];
        }
    }

Answer 1

You could pass an Func<T> to a method that creates a BackgroundWorker and call that action from within to DoWork-event.

Something like this

public class BackgroundWrapper<T>
{
    private Func<T> workMethod;
    private Action<T> completeMethod;
    public static void StartBackgroundworker(Func<T> workMethod, Action<T> completeMethod)
    {
        BackgroundWrapper<T> bWrap = new BackgroundWrapper<T>();
        bWrap.workMethod = workMethod;
        bWrap.completeMethod = completeMethod;
        bWrap.Start();
    }

    private void Start()
    {
        BackgroundWorker bw = new BackgroundWorker();
        bw.DoWork += new DoWorkEventHandler(bw_DoWork);
        bw.RunWorkerCompleted += new RunWorkerCompletedEventHandler(bw_RunWorkerCompleted);
        bw.RunWorkerAsync();
    }

    void bw_RunWorkerCompleted(object sender, RunWorkerCompletedEventArgs e)
    {
        completeMethod((T)e.Result);
    }

    void bw_DoWork(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e)
    {
        e.Result = workMethod();
    }
}