WPF BackgroundWorker vs. Dispatcher

Question

In my WPF application I need to do an async-operation then I need to update the GUI. And this thing I have to do many times in different moment with different oparations. I

Answer 1

BackgroundWorker is nice if you're doing a single operation, which provides progress notifications and a completion event. However, if you're going to be running the same operation multiple times, or multiple operations, then you'll need more than one BackgroundWorker. In this case, it can get cumbersome.

If you don't need the progress events, then using the ThreadPool and Dispatcher can be simpler - especially if you're going to be doing quite a few different operations.

If C# 4 is an option, however, using the Task Parallel Library is a great option, as well. This lets you use continuation tasks setup using the current SynchronizationContext, which provides a much simpler, cleaner model in many cases. For details, see my blog post on the subject.