Differences between the Java and .NET version of the Disruptor

The main differences comes from the fact that .NET supports structs (value types), Java doesn't.

In Java, every entry (or message) exchanged by the disruptor needs to inherit from a base class called AbstractEntry. This class exposes the Sequence number required by the disruptor to process the messages, it is basically a header for the message.

In .NET we have replaced AbstractEntry by a generic struct: Entry<T>. An entry contains 2 fields: the sequence number and a field called data, used to store the message (of type T). Using this struct has several advantages: * the array in the RingBuffer is of type Entry<T>, when we need to access the Sequence number we don't have to dereference (Entry<T> is a struct so instances are directly nested in the array) and this improves cache spatial locality. * your message types do not need to implement or inherit from a base class, you can use POCOs.