Dispose a Web Service Proxy class?

Question

When you create and use a Web Service proxy class in the ASP.Net framework, the class ultimately inherits from Component, which implements IDisposable.

I have never seen one example online where people dispose of a web proxy class, but was wondering if it really needs to be done. When I call only one method, I normally wrap it in a using statement, but if I have a need to call it several times throughout the page, I might end up using the same instance, and just wondered what the ramifications are of not disposing it.

Answer 1

You need to dispose everything that implements IDisposable.

The implementation of IDisposable signifies that the object holds onto something that the garbage collector doesn't intrinsically track - might be a connection, might be a file, might be some other handle - or might be nothing at all, it doesn't really matter. You shouldn't concern yourself with the implementation details because those are subject to change.

The class may or may not truly use unmanaged resources. It may or may not have a finalizer. It makes little difference; if the class implements IDisposable, then it's asking you to Dispose it when you're done. Even if the Dispose method does nothing, you never know when somebody will replace the reference to that class with a reference to a subclass that really does need to be disposed.