Windows Services and Threading

25 Feb 2006 3:10 PM

ermonnezzaro

Hi guys,

I am developing a windows services which periodically connects to a
database, fetches data in a dataset and do so work. I have chosen to
use a thread to do this job. Since the thread monitors the situations
every 2 hours, I put the thread in a sleep state. On my WinXp machine
everything works fine: memory grows to 200MB when loading data and goes
back to a normal state when I destroy the object. On a Win2003 server
things change a lot. When I start my service momory loaded is nearly
1Gb and it's never released. After few cicles it goes out of memory.
I am using a gc.collect before making the thread sleep ... but I am
scared of this. I was reading on few newgroup I could use a
Threading.Timer but I can't test this solution. Do you any idea?

Thanks

Alberto

27 Feb 2006 11:20 AM

Dmytro Lapshyn [MVP]

Hi,

I really doubt Thread.Sleep can contribute to memory consuption. Look
elsewhere. Unfortunately without seeing the code, I cannot be more specific.

But - I'd definitely avoid GC.Collect. Just use Dispose as prescribed and do
not leave references to objects you no longer need (be especially careful
with delegates).

<ermonnezz***@gmail.com> wrote in message
Show quote

news:1140880207.197061.284830@z34g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> Hi guys,
>
> I am developing a windows services which periodically connects to a
> database, fetches data in a dataset and do so work. I have chosen to
> use a thread to do this job. Since the thread monitors the situations
> every 2 hours, I put the thread in a sleep state. On my WinXp machine
> everything works fine: memory grows to 200MB when loading data and goes
> back to a normal state when I destroy the object. On a Win2003 server
> things change a lot. When I start my service momory loaded is nearly
> 1Gb and it's never released. After few cicles it goes out of memory.
> I am using a gc.collect before making the thread sleep ... but I am
> scared of this. I was reading on few newgroup I could use a
> Threading.Timer but I can't test this solution. Do you any idea?
>
> Thanks
>
> Alberto
>

27 Feb 2006 9:05 PM

ermonnezzaro

Thanks for your help Dmytro.
As I told you in my previous post the application works great on my
WindowsXp machine. Troubles come out when I try to run it on a Win 2003
Server biprocessor.
I use this code to create my main thread:

Try
            _thProcessDocuments = New System.Threading.Thread(AddressOf
ProcessDocumentsThread)
            _thProcessDocuments.Name = "ProcessDocuments"
            _thProcessDocuments.Start()

        Catch oException As System.Exception
            bRet = False

Log.Logger.WriteException("_thCreateDocuments->[CreateDocumentsThread]",
oException, Log.Logger.LogTypes.Error, Me.GetType, "StartService")
        End Try

and this is the procedure:

Private Sub ProcessDocumentsThread()

        Do While (_Started)

              ' Do some work ...
                Threading.Thread.CurrentThread.Slee(180 * 60000)

        Loop

End Sub

I do lots of things in the loop but I always put to nothing everything
even when I could not do it, for example when my variables go out of
scope.
I have implemented IDispose in most of my classes and I alway dispose
and destroy everything.
What else I could check? ... and why I don't have the same result on a
WinXp machine?

Thanks in advance

Alberto

Dmytro Lapshyn [MVP] wrote:
Show quote

> Hi,
>
> I really doubt Thread.Sleep can contribute to memory consuption. Look
> elsewhere. Unfortunately without seeing the code, I cannot be more specific.
>
> But - I'd definitely avoid GC.Collect. Just use Dispose as prescribed and do
> not leave references to objects you no longer need (be especially careful
> with delegates).
>
> <ermonnezz***@gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:1140880207.197061.284830@z34g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> > Hi guys,
> >
> > I am developing a windows services which periodically connects to a
> > database, fetches data in a dataset and do so work. I have chosen to
> > use a thread to do this job. Since the thread monitors the situations
> > every 2 hours, I put the thread in a sleep state. On my WinXp machine
> > everything works fine: memory grows to 200MB when loading data and goes
> > back to a normal state when I destroy the object. On a Win2003 server
> > things change a lot. When I start my service momory loaded is nearly
> > 1Gb and it's never released. After few cicles it goes out of memory.
> > I am using a gc.collect before making the thread sleep ... but I am
> > scared of this. I was reading on few newgroup I could use a
> > Threading.Timer but I can't test this solution. Do you any idea?
> >
> > Thanks
> >
> > Alberto
> >