Introducing the TPL Dataflow library
The TPL Dataflow library has been available for as long as TPL itself. It was released in 2010 after .NET Framework 4.0 reached its RTM milestone. The members of the dataflow library are part of the System.Threading.Tasks.Dataflow namespace. The dataflow library is intended to build on the basics of parallel programming that are provided in TPL, expanding to address data flow scenarios (hence the name of the library). The dataflow library is made up of foundational classes called blocks. Each data flow block is responsible for a particular action or step in the overall flow.
The dataflow library consists of three basic types of blocks:
- Source blocks: These blocks implement the
ISourceBlock<TOutput>interface. Source blocks can have their data read from the workflow you define. - Target blocks: This type of block implements the
ITargetBlock<TInput>interface and is a data receiver. - Propagator blocks: These blocks act...
