Finalize and Dispose Guidelines

Difference between Finalize and Dispose:

Finalize Method(): Releases unmanaged resources and performs other cleanup operations before the SmiConnection is reclaimed by garbage collection.

void Finalize ();

Dispose Method(): Closes the connection to the database. It is intended for use by SQL Server.  For other databases, use the hosting mechanism provided by that database.

void Dispose ();

The following are guidelines/recommendations for using Finalize and Dispose(From MSDN):

• Call Close or Dispose on classes that support it.
• Use the using statement in C# and Try/Finally blocks in Visual Basic .NET to ensure Dispose is called.
• Do not implement Finalize unless required.
• Implement Finalize only if you hold unmanaged resources across client calls.
• Move the Finalization burden to the leaves of object graphs.
• If you implement Finalize, implement IDisposable.
• If you implement Finalize and Dispose, use the Dispose pattern.
• Suppress finalization in your Dispose method.
• Allow Dispose to be called multiple times.
• Call Dispose on base classes and on IDisposable members.
• Keep finalizer code simple to prevent blocking.
• Provide thread safe cleanup code only if your type is thread safe.