Question

I’m processing 1 million records in my application, which I retrieve from a MySQL database. To do so I’m using Linq to get the records and use .Skip() and .Take() to process 250 records at a time. For each retrieved record I need to create 0 to 4 Items, which I then add to the database. So the average amount of total Items that has to be created is around 2 million.

IQueryable<Object> objectCollection = dataContext.Repository<Object>();
int amountToSkip = 0;
IList<Object> objects = objectCollection.Skip(amountToSkip).Take(250).ToList();
while (objects.Count != 0)
        {
            using (dataContext = new LinqToSqlContext(new DataContext()))
            {
                foreach (Object objectRecord in objects)
                {
                    // Create 0 - 4 Random Items
                    for (int i = 0; i < Random.Next(0, 4); i++)
                    {
                        Item item = new Item();
                        item.Id = Guid.NewGuid();
                        item.Object = objectRecord.Id;
                        item.Created = DateTime.Now;
                        item.Changed = DateTime.Now;
                        dataContext.InsertOnSubmit(item);
                    }
                }
                dataContext.SubmitChanges();
            }
            amountToSkip += 250;
            objects = objectCollection.Skip(amountToSkip).Take(250).ToList();
        }

Now the problem arises when creating the Items. When running the application (and not even using dataContext) the memory increases consistently. It’s like the items are never getting disposed. Does anyone notice what I’m doing wrong?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Ok I’ve just discussed this situation with a colleague of mine and we’ve come to the following solution which works!

int amountToSkip = 0;
var finished = false;
while (!finished)
{
      using (var dataContext = new LinqToSqlContext(new DataContext()))
      {
           var objects = dataContext.Repository<Object>().Skip(amountToSkip).Take(250).ToList();
           if (objects.Count == 0)
                finished = true;
           else
           {
                foreach (Object object in objects)
                {
                    // Create 0 - 4 Random Items
                    for (int i = 0; i < Random.Next(0, 4); i++)
                    {
                        Item item = new Item();
                        item.Id = Guid.NewGuid();
                        item.Object = object.Id;
                        item.Created = DateTime.Now;
                        item.Changed = DateTime.Now;
                        dataContext.InsertOnSubmit(item);
                     }
                 }
                 dataContext.SubmitChanges();
            }
            // Cumulate amountToSkip with processAmount so we don't go over the same Items again
            amountToSkip += processAmount;
        }
}

With this implementation we dispose the Skip() and Take() cache everytime and thus don’t leak memory!