Is it bad to have threads waiting in java?

Question

I have a thread that basically contains

while(true) {
  current = BlockingQueue.take();
  results = queryDatabaseWith(current);
  AtomicReference.set( results );
}

Realistically the queue is only ever going to have a few things put on it, but it's important that when things are, the DB queries happen in the correct order. The atomic ref is fine as I only care about the results from the last DB query.

Is it bad practice to have this on a thread, basically waiting all day?

Answer 1

No it is not bad to have waiting threads in general, it is common practice and often the nicest solution.

As the answer is pretty short, just a quick advice: If it is not necessary that your thread reacts immediately , you might consider adding Thread.yield to your infinite waiting loop, depending on the system it is running on this can save some unnecessary CPU-usage. See the Oracle documentation