What happens if we don't delete object handle? How it affects? How do we see that? - PROGRESS 4GL

Question

I am using below query which has handle but I can see nothing happens even if I delete/not delete the object of the handle. But everyone says always delete the object finally. Why we need to delete them? what happens if we don't delete them? How do we see that ?

finally:
  if valid-handle(hQueryTest)   then delete object hQueryTest no-error.
  if valid-handle(hQuerytestvalue) then delete object hQuerytestvalue no-error.
end finally.

Answer 1

OpenEdge simply does not have a reference count based garbage collector for handle based objects. So the object the query handle points to will remain in memory of the AVM forever. If that's on an AppServer, the memory consumption of the AppServer process may grow slightly but steadily.

OpenEdge has the concept of WIDGET-POOLs that can support with memory management.

You can check the DynObjects.* Log-entry-type to get insights into the Life-Time of dynamic objects, handle-based or class-based.