Java 5 - ScheduledExecutorService - new way of writing java scheduler

Java Timer/TimerTask was used for scheduling tasks which requires to be executed at certain interval, frequency etc. Java 5 introduced the concept of thread pool for limiting number of threads executing at a particular point of time. Creating a thread consumes a significant amount of memory and hence limiting the number of threads via thread pool will give better performance and saves memory.

Java 5 documentation recommends to use ScheduledExecutorService for creating scheduler jobs. This is further simpler implementation and doesn't require subclassing as was required in case of a TimerTask.

Example scheduler using ScheduledExecutorService is as follows:

package com.prasune.test.concurrent; import java.util.Date; import java.util.concurrent.Executors; import java.util.concurrent.ScheduledExecutorService; import java.util.concurrent.ScheduledFuture; import java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit; public class SchedulerService {         public static void main(String[] args) {                 ScheduledExecutorService scheduler = Executors.newScheduledThreadPool(5);                 Runnable command = new Runnable() {                        @Override             public void run() {                 System.out.println("Executing the scheduler " + new Date());             }         };                 // Creates and executes a periodic action that becomes enabled first         // after the given initial delay, and subsequently with the given period         final ScheduledFuture timerHandle =                 scheduler.scheduleAtFixedRate(command, 5, 60, TimeUnit.SECONDS);                 // Stop command execution after one hour         Runnable cancelTimerCommand = new Runnable() {             public void run() {                 timerHandle.cancel(true);                 }         };                 scheduler.schedule(cancelTimerCommand, 60 * 60, TimeUnit.SECONDS);     } }