Memory leak when exceptions are thrown?

Question

Hello,
I'm doing a simple database connect with the JDBC Oracle 8.1.6 oci8 drivers on Solaris. It seems whenever I try to repeatedly connect to a database, and an exception is thrown, such as database not found, or wrong password, the program size grows and grows until it runs out of memory. I've narrowed it down to being the getConnection operation as the casue of this memory leak.
Now, if I repeatedly connect successfully, there is no problem, it will run all day, but if there are exceptions thrown, memory leaks. Has anyone else encountered this?
I'll paste a sample program below which shows the problem. Maybe someone can help???
import java.sql.*;
import java.util.*;
import java.io.*;
public class connect extends Thread {
private oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver oDriver = new oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver();
private Connection connection;
* Open a connection to the database
private void connectToDB() {
try {
connection = DriverManager.getConnection ("jdbc:oracle:oci8:@test", "test", "test");
connection.close();
} catch (SQLException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
System.out.println("couldn't connect");
public void run() {
try {
DriverManager.registerDriver(oDriver);
} catch (SQLException e) {}
while(true) {
try {
sleep(1000);
connectToDB();
} catch (InterruptedException ie) {}
public static void main(String[] args) {
connect conn = new connect();
conn.start();
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Answer 1

Try this:
private void connectToDB() {
try {
connection = DriverManager.getConnection ("jdbc:oracle:oci8:@test", "test", "test");
} catch (SQLException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
System.out.println("couldn't connect");
finally {
connection.close();
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