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Skip to next task in a single threaded ExecutorSerivce?

I am considering an implementation of an ExecutorService to run a series of tasks. I plan to use the internal queue to have a few tasks waiting for their turn to run. Is there some way to interrupt the task (the Runnable) that is currently running in an ExecutorService thread, and keep the thread alive to run the next task? Or is only possible to call .shutdown() and then create a new ExecutorService?
I have found this and wanted to know if there are any other solutions.

Instead of interfering with the threads you may want to have a Task class (that extends or wraps the Runnable) which implements an interrupt mechanism (e.g. a boolean flag).
When you execute your task you need to check this flag periodically and if it is set, the task should stop what it is doing. You might want to return a specific result at this point, that tells your code that the task was cancelled succesfully.
If a user now decides that he no longer requires the results from this task,
you will have to set this flag. However the task might have already completed at this point of time so you still need to deal with the cases where the result already exists but the user does no longer care about it.
An interrupt on a thread level does not guarantee that the thread stops working. This will only work if the thread is in a state where it can receive an interrupt.
Also you should not interfere with the Threads of the ExecutorSerivce directly, as you might unintentionally stop a different task or stop the ExecutorSerivce from working properly.

Why would you want to kill that task and continue with the next one? If it is a question of times you can define that the threads that are taking longer than you declared in the method that executes them are automatically canceled. E.g:
ExecutorService executor = Executors.newSingleThreadExecutor();
executor.invokeAll(Arrays.asList(new Task()), 60, TimeUnit.SECONDS); // Timeout of 60 seconds.
executor.shutdown();
If any of the threads takes longer than 60 seconds it will throw a cancellation.Exception() that you must catch

schedule on task at a time - java

I have a task that is scheduled periodically. Sometime it can take longer than expected.
I am trying to find a way to make sure that scheduling will be canceled in case the task is already running. All mechanisms I check will make the task wait and run it after the first finish
locking ofcourse will do the job but I'm looking of something more high level
Any Idea

You can use ScheduledExecutorService. scheduleAtFixedRate is probably what you want as it will wait for your tasks to finish, iff one takes longer than the rate you specify:
If any execution of this task takes longer than its period, then subsequent executions may start late, but will not concurrently execute.
Example:
ScheduledExecutorService scheduler = Executors.newSingleThreadScheduledExecutor();
scheduler.scheduleAtFixedRate(() -> {
// Body will be executed every second unless the previous task hasn't finished.
}, 0L, 1L, TimeUnit.SECONDS);

There is something called scheduleAtFixedRate and scheduleAtFixedDelay.
scheduleAtFixedRate will start another process at defined time, so if previous process is not completed, two processes will be running and it might cause race condition of running same thing twice.
scheduleAtFixedDelay will start after fixed time once a task is completed.
scheduleAtFixedRate vs scheduleWithFixedDelay
In Spring you can do this by using annotation:-
#Scheduled(fixedDelay =30000)
http://howtodoinjava.com/spring/spring-core/4-ways-to-schedule-tasks-in-spring-3-scheduled-example/

do you know Apache Camel framework?
It has a module called quartz2 and has a much possibility to scheduling any task.
try read this page:
http://camel.apache.org/quartz2.html

Force regular execution of periodic task within Java application

ScheduledExecutorService seems to have the problem that if it can't get a free thread the periodic task will happen with delay. Unfortunately for me, the periodic task it's assigned to really does need to happen fairly on schedule. At present it's scheduled for once per minute but sometimes due to the application being busy with other things (I assume this is why) it fails to make it within five minutes, and five minutes happens to be the "major production bugs" threshold.
How to force this via prioritizing or otherwise controlling the thread balancer?

If your ScheduledExecutorService is used for other tasks or if your task sometimes takes more than 1 minute to run, you can simply increase the number of threads available in your ScheduledExecutorService. So if one task has not finished running, the executor will still be able to run a new one.
ScheduledExecutorService scheduler = Executors.newScheduledThreadPool(10);
(I picked 10 randomly - if you run your task every minute and it can run for up to 5 minutes, that leaves you some margin for error)

handling sleep in java scheduled executor service

I have a sort of complex problem like below.
- we have a real time system with large number threads requirement. In order to optimize the performance, we are thinking of following design.
create a thread pool executor with max number of threads
each thread is used to create scheduled executor service.
now the tasks are being assigned to these executor services evenly based on load
BUT the biggest problem is, if one of the task in the queue contains a sleep (for few secs), it blocks the corresponding Schedule executor service thread for that duration and subsequently all the following tasks in that queue.
In this regard, please suggest me how to suspend the execution of the task with sleep OR overriding the sleep somehow and rejoin/schedule the task again to the queue.
Thanks in advance
Seshu

Assuming I understand your question, your Schedule Executor service threads have a deadline requirement, but the actual workers can sleep for an unknown length of time, possibly throwing off the timing of the Schedule Executors. From your description I'm guessing what you want is for a task that needs to sleep to actually stop, save progress information and then requeue itself for the remainder of the work to be rescheduled at some future time. You'd have to build this into your application architecture.
Alternatively, you could have the scheduler threads launch the worker tasks in their own separate threads, letting them sleep as necessary, with one scheduler thread collecting all the worker terminations.
To get a better answer you're going to have to provide more information about what you're trying to accomplish.

Tasks which sleep are inherently unfriendly for running in any kind of bounded thread pool. The sleep is explicitly telling the thread that it must do nothing for a period of time.
If possible, split the task into 2 (or more parts), eliminating the sleep completely. Get the first half-task to schedule the second task with an appropriate delay.
Failing that, you could consider increasing the size of your thread pool somewhat - either setting a much larger cap to its size, or possibly even eliminating the cap altogether (not recommended for a server than might end up with many clients).
Alternatively, move the tasks with sleep statements in them into their own Scheduled executor. Then, they'll delay each other, but better-behaved tasks, with no wait statements in them, will get preferential treatment.

Is Java's Timer task guaranteed not to run concurrently?

new Timer(...).schedule(task)
Is task guaranteed to be run by a single thread at any given time?

From the Javadoc
Corresponding to each Timer object is a single background thread that is used to execute all of the timer's tasks, sequentially. Timer tasks should complete quickly. If a timer task takes excessive time to complete, it "hogs" the timer's task execution thread. This can, in turn, delay the execution of subsequent tasks, which may "bunch up" and execute in rapid succession when (and if) the offending task finally completes.
So, yes, you get a new Thread (separate from the caller's thread). Every task in that timer shares the same thread.

There is a single thread per Timer, so the answer to your question is yes

Indeed. They all run on a same background thread corresponded to the Timer object in sequence. BUT two different Timer instances will run (I believe) on different threads, so you have to save reference to a timer object to schedule more tasks sequentialy.