Could you explain STA and MTA?

Question

Can you explain STA and MTA in your own words?

Also, what are apartment threads and do they pertain only to COM? If so, why?

Answer 1

STA (Single Threaded Apartment) is basically the concept that only one thread will interact with your code at a time. Calls into your apartment are marshaled via windows messages (using a non-visible) window. This allows calls to be queued and wait for operations to complete.

MTA (Multi Threaded Apartment) is where many threads can all operate at the same time and the onus is on you as the developer to handle the thread security.

There is a lot more to learn about threading models in COM, but if you are having trouble understanding what they are then I would say that understanding what the STA is and how it works would be the best starting place because most COM objects are STA’s.

Apartment Threads, if a thread lives in the same apartment as the object it is using then it is an apartment thread. I think this is only a COM concept because it is only a way of talking about the objects and threads they interact with…