[XALANJ-2378] XMLReaderManager can hold too much memory

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Open
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Unresolved
• Affects Version/s: The Latest Development Code, 2.7.1
• Component/s: Xalan
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Brian Minchau
• Created: 12/Apr/07 16:40
• Updated: 12/Apr/07 16:40

Description

XMLReaderManager has a scheme where each thread holds its own XMLReader for re-use across subsequent transformations.

For example each thread used to run a servlet would cache and re-use the rather large heavy weight XMLReader for re-use.

The problem is that this may lead to memory exhaustion in the name of performance. This is not a memory leak that gets larger with time, but rather that too many XMLReader-s may be cached and cause memory exhaustion.

Since we have moved beyond JRE 1.1.8 we can now use newer memory services, for example we can hold the references to XMLReader-s with weak references that can be garbage collected when memory runs low.