PRB: COM Objects are not Being Released in Java

CAUSE

If you do not call ComLib.release, normal garbage-collection will attempt to perform the release for you. However, this mechanism is not guaranteed due to the threading limitations of many COM objects. That is, many COM objects can be called only on the thread on which they were created. Because garbage collection occurs at unpredictable times, the required thread may have expired or may be no longer responding to messages by the time garbage-collection reclaims the object. In addition, this unpredictability can obscure true memory leaks and/or tie up important system resources.

import excel8.*;
import com.ms.com.*;

_Global globXL=null;
_Application appXL=null;

try
{
   globXL = (_Global)new Global();
   appXL = (_Application)globXL.getApplication();
}
catch (ComFailException e)
{
   System.out.println(e.getMessage());
}
				

try
{
   ComLib.release(appXL);
   appXL=null;
   ComLib.release(globXL);
   globXL=null;
}
catch (ComFailException e)
{
   System.out.println(e.getMessage());
}