Hi Tina,
Yes, it is possible to Manage to write your own custom Managed Memory leak.
Garbage Collection IS automatic, but unless you put your cans out on the
street, they will never get picked up. IOW, the purpose of Memory Management
and Garbage Collection is not to allow you more time to play Solitaire, but
to help you prevent your own forest fires, as Smokey the Bandit would say.
;-)
The first thing you need to do is to determine that you will, in the future,
take more responsibility for your code. As Fox Mulder would say, "Trust No
one" (not even content from Microsoft!). Or, as my old boss when I was a
carpenter in Skokie Indiana would say "Measure twice, cut once."
Second, let's have a look at some diagnostic tools and techniques. One thing
I might point out regarding why it may have worked so beautifully on your
machine is, when you start a project in Visual Studio for debugging, it
restarts the application, thereby wiping out all accumulated memory for that
application. If you didn't use Visual Studio, well, you probably didn't put
the app under any stress. For example, the Application will stop itself 20
minutes after the last client Request, and won't start again until the next.
A good practice is to put the app first on a staging server and then put it
under some stress over a long period of time. Microsoft Application Center
2000 is a free tool that you can download from Microsoft.com for testing ASP
and ASPO.net apps. It can put a simulated load on your app, enabling you to
see how it functions under stress.
Windows Taks Manager can be used to monitor memory and processor performance
easily while running your app. You can also set up Performance Counters in
your app for monitoring and/or recording various aspects of your app's
performance while running it.
Of course, logging is also an excellent tool to employ in your app for
debugging purposes of various types.
--
HTH,
Kevin Spencer
Microsoft MVP
..Net Developer
What You Seek Is What You Get.
