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Asked: 2026-05-10T19:20:42+00:00

I am cleaning up the DataReaders in an old .NET 1.1 project that I

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I am cleaning up the DataReaders in an old .NET 1.1 project that I inherited.

The previous developer coded the data-access-layer in such a way that most of the DAL methods returned SqlDataReaders (thus leaving it up to the caller to properly call the .Close() or .Dispose() methods).

I have come across a situation, though, where a caller is not catching the returned SqlDataReader (and therefore is not disposing of it properly). See the code below:

Data Access Method:

Public Shared Function UpdateData() As SqlDataReader    ...     drSQL = cmdSQL.ExecuteReader(CommandBehavior.CloseConnection)     Return drSQL  End Function

Calling code:

... DataAccessLayer.UpdateData() ...

As you can see, the calling method does not receive/catch the returned SqlDataReader. So what happens? Is that SqlDataReader still out there and open? Or does it automatically get garbage collected since nothing is addressing it?

I couldn’t think of a way to debug and test this. If anybody has any ideas or suggestions that would be great.

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1 Answer

  1. i believe that it will get closed but not until the garbage-collector gets ’round to it, which may not be for a very long time…

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