.NET interview: What is the difference between a Thread and Process?
A process is a collection of virtual memory space, code, data, and system resources. A thread is code that is to be serially executed within a process. A processor executes threads, not processes, so each application has at least one process, and a process always has at least one thread of execution, known as the primary thread. A process can have multiple threads in addition to the primary thread. Prior to the introduction of multiple threads of execution, applications were all designed to run on a single thread of execution.
When a thread begins to execute, it continues until it is killed or until it is interrupted by a thread with higher priority (by a user action or the kernel’s thread scheduler). Each thread can run separate sections of code, or multiple threads can execute the same section of code. Threads executing the same block of code maintain separate stacks. Each thread in a process shares that process’s global variables and resources.
What Every .NET Developers Ought To Know
- Describe the difference between a Thread and a Process?
- What is a Windows Service and how does its lifecycle differ from a "standard" EXE?
- What is the maximum amount of memory any single process on Windows can address? Is this different than the maximum virtual memory for the system? How would this affect a system design?
- What is the difference between an EXE and a DLL?
- What is strong-typing versus weak-typing? Which is preferred? Why?
- Corillian's product is a "Component Container." Name at least 3 component containers that ship now with the Windows Server Family.
- What is a PID? How is it useful when troubleshooting a system?
- How many processes can listen on a single TCP/IP port?
- What is the GAC? What problem does it solve?
