Question

I have two threads, one needs to poll a bunch of separate static resources looking for updates. The other one needs to get the data and store it in the database. How can thread 1 tell thread 2 that there is something to process?

Answer 1

If the pieces of data are independant then treat the pieces of data as work items to be processed by a pool of threads. Use the thread pool and QueueUserWorkItem to post the data to the thread(s). You should get better scalability using a pool of symmetric threads and limiting the amount of synchronisation that has to occur between the producer and consumer(s).

For example (from MSDN):

    TaskInfo ti = new TaskInfo('This report displays the number {0}.', 42);      // Queue the task and data.     if (ThreadPool.QueueUserWorkItem(new WaitCallback(ThreadProc), ti)) {             Console.WriteLine('Main thread does some work, then sleeps.');          // If you comment out the Sleep, the main thread exits before         // the ThreadPool task has a chance to run.  ThreadPool uses          // background threads, which do not keep the application          // running.  (This is a simple example of a race condition.)         Thread.Sleep(1000);          Console.WriteLine('Main thread exits.');     }     else {         Console.WriteLine('Unable to queue ThreadPool request.');      }   // The thread procedure performs the independent task, in this case // formatting and printing a very simple report. // static void ThreadProc(Object stateInfo) {     TaskInfo ti = (TaskInfo) stateInfo;     Console.WriteLine(ti.Boilerplate, ti.Value);  }