C# Unable to clear memory of large generic collection

i am putting 2 very large datasets into memory, performing a join to filter out a subset from the first collection and then attempting to destroy the second collection as it uses approximately 600MB of my system's RAM. The problem is that the code below is not working. After the code below runs, a foreach loop runs and takes about 15 mins. During this time the memory does NOT reduce from 600MB+. Am i doing something wrong?

List<APPLES> tmpApples =开发者_Go百科 dataContext.Apples.ToList(); // 100MB
List<ORANGES> tmpOranges = dataContext.Oranges.ToList(); // 600MB

List<APPLES> filteredApples = tmpApples
    .Join(tmpOranges, apples => apples.Id, oranges => oranges.Id, (apples, oranges) => apples).ToList();
tmpOranges.Clear();
tmpOranges = null;
GC.Collect();

Note i re-use tmpApples later so i am not clearing it just now..

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A few things to note:

• Unless your dataContext can be cleared / garbage collected, that may well be retaining references to a lot of objects
• Calling Clear() and then setting the variable to null is pointless, if you're really not doing anything else with the list. The GC can tell when you're not using a variable any more, in almost all cases.
• Presumably you're judging how much memory the process has reserved; I don't think the CLR will actually return memory to the operating system, but the memory which has been freed by garbage collection will be available to further uses within the CLR. (EDIT: As per comments below, it's possible that the CLR frees areas of the Large Object Heap, but I don't know for sure.)

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Clearing, nullifying and collecting hardly ever has any (positive) effect. The GC will automatically detect when objects are not referenced anymore. Further more, As long as the Join operation runs, both the tmpApples and tmpOranges collections are referenced and with it all their objects. They can therefore not be collected.

A better solution would be to do the filter in the database:

// NOTE That I removed the ToList operations
IQueryable<APPLE> tmpApples = dataContext.Apples;
IQueryable<ORANGE> tmpOranges = dataContext.Oranges;

List<APPLES> filteredApples = tmpApples
    .Join(tmpOranges, apples => apples.Id, 
       oranges => oranges.Id, (apples, oranges) => apples)
    .ToList();

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The reason this data is not collected back is because although you are clearing the collection (hence collection does not have a reference to items anymore),DataContext keeps a reference and this causes it to stay in memory.

You have to dispose your DataContext as soon as you are done.

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UPDATE

OK, you probably have fallen victim to large object issue.

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Assuming this as Large Object Heap issue you could try to not retrieve all apples at once but instead get them in "packets". So instead of calling

List<APPLE> apples = dataContext.Apples.ToList()

instead try to store the apples in separate lists

int packetSize = 100;
List<APPLE> applePacket1 = dataContext.Apples.Take(packetSize);
List<APPLE> applePacket2 = dataContext.Applies.Skip(packetSize).Take(packetSize);

Does that help?

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Use some profiler tools or SOS.dll to find out, where your memory belongs to. If some operations take TOO much time, this sounds like you are swapping out to page file.

EDIT: Also keep in mind, the Debug version will delay the collection of local variables which are not referenced anymore for easier investigation.

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The only thing you're doing wrong is explicitly calling the Garbage collector. You don't need to do this (in fact you shouldn't) and as Steven says you don't need to do anything to the collections anyway they'll just go away - eventually.

If you're concern is the performance of the 15 minute foreach loop perhaps it is that loop which you should post. It is probably not related to the memory usage.