Question

I’m trying to use BackgroundWorker to load-test a web service,
Code is:

    private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        CheckWS("11111");
        CheckWS("22222");
        CheckWS("3344111");
        // .. and some more of those, approx 1000
    }

    public void CheckWS(string sUser)
    {
        BackgroundWorker bgWork = new BackgroundWorker();

        bgWork.DoWork += new DoWorkEventHandler(bgWork_DoWork);

        sObject sData = new sObject();
        sData.iNum = iCount++;
        sData.sId = sUser;
        bgWork.RunWorkerAsync(sData);
    }

    public void bgWork_DoWork(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e)
    {
        // Update a textbox that this worker started
        ...
        // Run a web service
        ...
        // Update the textbox as worker ended
    }

But according to the time taken for the job the get done, and according to the output of the workers (worker begin&end in the textbox), it takes way too long for each worker to start –

I would expect everything to run simultaneously, but instead, it executes only 2-3 background workers at a time…

Any ideas on this issue?

Answer 1

Backgroundworkers run on top of the ThreadPool and the TP purposely limits the number of threads.

Since this is a Test(-driver) app there is no problem in changing the config of the Pool. You can set the Minimum number of threads to something sensible.

   ThreadPool.SetMinThreads(20, 20);