Managing Processes

• Using multiple threads to improve performance, especially from server applications or computers with multiple processors. You can also use multiple threads to allow your application to be more responsive to user input. As an alternative, Windows NT/Windows 2000 supports asynchronous file access. You can issue file requests and have the system notify you when they have completed. This is more efficient than having a separate thread for each outstanding concurrent file request.
• Use the SetPriorityClass function to allow your process to use the real-time priority class. This is useful for an application which is processing data in real time or doing time-sensitive communication with an external device. Your application should not use the real-time priority class for very long or you it will preempt all activity on the system, including the work of system processes.
• Call the VirtualLock function to identify a small number of pages to retain in memory, so you do not have to wait for normal paging when attempting to respond to a real-time device. Your design should minimizes the amount of code that executes in the real-time priority class with locked pages. You can use event objects and memory-mapped files to exchange information with processes running at normal priority.
• When storing and retrieving data from the registry, use the data type MULTI_SZ. This data type allows you to store a set of data values under the name of a single value by concatenating the strings into a single multistring. A multistring has multiple individual strings separated by a /0 character, with the last one followed by an additional /0 character. One registry call retrieves all the strings. This is very efficient, especially if the value is accessed remotely.
• Windows NT/Windows 2000 uses Unicode internally. Unicode is a 16-bit character-coding standard which includes symbols for all international languages. From a performance viewpoint, it is better to write the application to work with Unicode. This decreases overhead and make the application easier to port to foreign languages.