Multi-threading allows multiple copies of the agent (each copy is a thread) to run at once and share resources, rather than requiring each agent to wait for its predecessor to complete processing before starting. Although individual agent processes may run more slowly as they compete for resources, a series of agents will run faster because they use the resources more efficiently than in a single-thread environment. For example, an agent that requires 5 seconds to run in a single-thread environment may require 7 seconds to run in a multi-threaded environment, but three copies of that agent might run concurrently in 10 seconds, while they would require 15 seconds to run if queued to run sequentially.

Multi-threading only works when your ODBC driver supports it. Most DBMS programs support multi-tasking and handle data contention on the back-end.

Glossary