Why is my WPF Treeview bound to LinqToSql classes being a memory hog?

Question

I have a WPF App which is grinding to a halt after running out of memory...
It is basically a TreeView displaying nodes, which are instances of Linq To Sql OR Generated class ICTemplates.Segment. There around 20 tables indirectly linked via associations to this class in the OR designer.

<TreeView Grid.Column="0" x:Name="tvwSegments" 
                      ItemsSource="{Binding}" 
                      SelectedItemChanged="OnNewSegmentSelected"/>
<HierarchicalDataTemplate DataType="{x:Type local:Segment}" ItemsSource="{Binding Path=Children}"> 
...

// code behind, set the data context based on user-input (Site, Id)
KeeperOfControls.DataContext = from segment in tblSegments
   where segment.site == iTemplateSite && segment.id == iTemplateSid
   select segment;

I've added an explicit property called Children to the segment class which looks up another table with parent-child records.

public IEnumerable<Segment> Children
{
  get
  {
    System1ConfigDataContext dc = new System1ConfigDataContext();
    return from link in this.ChildLinks
      join segment in dc.Segments on new { Site = link.ChildSite, ID = link.ChildSID } equals new { Site = segment.site, ID = segment.id }
      select segment;
  }
}

The rest of it is data binding coupled with data templates to display each Segment as a set of UI Controls.

I'm pretty certain that the children are being loaded on-demand (when I expand the parent) going by the response time. When I expand a node with around 70 children, it takes a while before the children are loaded (Task manager shows Mem Usage as 1000000K!). If I expand the next node with around 50 children, BOOM! OutOfMemoryException

I ran the VS Profiler to dig deeper and here are the results

Summary Page Object Lifetimes Allocation

The top 3 are Action, DeferredSourceFactory.DeferredSource and EntitySet (all .Net/LINQ classes). The only user-classes are Segment[] and Segment come in at #9 an #10.

I can't think of a lead to pursue.. What could be the reason ?

Answer 1

The issue seems to be the creation of multiple S1DataContext objects as Sirocco referred to. I tried the using statement to force a Dispose and make it eligible for collection. However it resulted in an ObjectDisposedException that I can't make sense of.

1. The control goes from the line that sets the data context of the DockPanel KeeperOfAllControls.
2. [External Code] (shown in call stack)
3. Segment.Children.get (has a using block with dc)
4. Back at the Line in Step 1... the Linq query uses tblSegments which is retrieved from a local instance of S1DataContext

Anyways so i assume that there is something that prevents multiple DataContexts from being created and disposed. So I tried a Singleton DataContext.
And it works!

• the TreeView control is significantly more responsive, every node I tried loads in 3-4 secs max.
• I put in a GC.Collect (for verification) before every fetch/search and now the memory usage stays between 200,000-300,000K.

The OR generated System.Data.Linq.DataContext doesn't seem to go away unless it is disposed explicitly (eating memory). Trying to Dispose it in my case, didn't pan out.. even though both functions had their own using blocks (no shared instance of DataContext). Though I dislike Singletons, I'm making a small internal tool for devs and hence don't mind it as of now.. None of the LinqToSql samples I saw online.. had Dispose calls mandated.

So I guess the problem has been fixed. Thanks to all the people that acted as more eyeballs to make this bug shallow.

Answer 2

maybe a using surrounding that DataContext ?

using(System1ConfigDataContext dc = new System1ConfigDataContext()){
  .... ?
}

also, have you tried using an sql profiler? might shed some light on the matter.

Answer 3

Have you tried using a global DataContext instead of one for each element?

Creating all of the DataContext's each with there own query and results could be the cause of your memory bloat.

Answer 4

I don't know the exact solution but the new statement in join may cause this. Because for each relation a new object could be created(But as I mentioned, I don't know if it is correct).

Could you try this;

public IEnumerable<Segment> Children
{
  get
  {
    System1ConfigDataContext dc = new System1ConfigDataContext();
    return from link in this.ChildLinks
      join segment in dc.Segments on link.ChildSite == segment.site && link.ChildSID == segment.id
      select segment;
  }
}