Is there a way to ensure that threads are assigned to a specified set of objects?

Question

We are working on an application where a set of objects can be affected by receiving messages from 3 different sources. Each message (from any of the sources) has a single objec

Answer 1

You should be able to provide a special BlockingQueue for ThreadPoolExecutor. The queue remembers which type of message is being processed by which thread, so that it can withhold all messages of the same type.

MyQueue

    ownership relation of thread - msgType 

    take/poll()

        if current thread owns msg type X
            if there is a message of type X
                return that message
            else
                give up ownership

        // current thread does not own any message type
        if there is a messsage of type Y, Y is not owned by any thread
            current thread owns Y
            return that message

        // there's no message belonging to an unowned type
        wait then retry