Multiple Threads in Java

Hi I am writing a servlet to check HTTP links stored in a database and record the status code for each link present

obviously forming a connection to a website can take a while so Ideally I want to construct a thread group so it would be possible to have five threads doing the link checking

however I have no idea how I can do this as the data comes out of the database

Code:

---

while (rs.next())
            {
              String linkToCheck = rs.getString("location");
              if (linkToCheck != null)
              {
                  try
                  {
                    link.openConnection(linkToCheck);
                    String headerInfo[] = link.splitHeaderInfo(link.getHeaderData());
                    out.println("RESPONSE CODE "+headerInfo[1]);
                  }
                  catch (MalformedURLException ex)
                  {
                    out.println(
                          Malformed URL"+ ex.toString());
                  }
                  catch (IOException ex)
                  {
                    out.println(
                          "IO Exception"+ex.toString());
                  }

---

So what I want ideally is a way for the thread to signal it is finished and then pick up the next bit of data from the database (or could store this in a collection and use that)