Anyone who has browsed this blog enough has probably figured out that I am a fan of Doctor Dobb’s Journal. This month’s issue inaugurates a new column by Herb Sutter dealing with concurrency. In my opinion, the confluence of mult-processor/multi-core systems with a greater emphasis on server-based GIS makes concurrency a huge issue for the GIS community.
The most obvious example of where concurrency can be of benefit is ArcGIS Server. The entire ArcObjects library is exposed in such a way that complex geospatial operations can be published as services. Many such operations can benefit from concurrency, especially as they are executed in a multi-user, server-based context.
I am of the opinion that the current 9.x architecture of AGS (with COM under the hood) is not optimally suited for such an approach but it will be interesting to see how ESRI addresses concurrency as 10.0 evolves. I also view the current AGS as a step along a path rather than an intended end state. Of course, there are other technologies out there. I merely hold up AGS as an obvious and visible example of a product that can benefit from being built with concurrency in mind. Of course, it’s up to us as software developers to correctly build our apps as well.
That said, I highly recommend this column. The inaugural installment rightly kicks off from a conceptual standpoint but I suspect we’ll be in the weeds soon enough.
