properly creating and cleaning up application contexts

I have embedded SISC into my application as a command
layer. Any number of clients may interact with the
application simultaneously using a remote REPL like
interface. So that the clients don’t walk over each
other I create a unique application context for each
client.

URL heapfile = new URL(System.getProperty(HEAP));
SeekableInputStream heap =
AppContext.openHeap(heapfile);
AppContext appContext = new AppContext();
appContext.addHeap(heap);

I then route all client requests back to the
appropriate application context and retrieve an
interpreter to serve the request:

Interpreter r = Context.enter(appContext);

First, I wonder if there’s a better way to do what I
am doing. To me it seems wasteful to read in the heap
for each client. An older sisc-users message mentioned
AssociativeEnvironments but it seems out of date. I’d
imagine that there’s a way to load the heap into a top
level environment and then to set that environment as
the client’s parent environment. Unfortunately, I’m
not sure how to implement this idea.

Second, I need a way to completely remove the client’s
context from memory when the client is done with it.
Currently I remove the application context from my
session map but the memory never gets freed up. Given
that I have removed the only reference to the
application context that I keep what do I need to do
to get SISC to release all of its references so that
the VM can reclaim the memory? Left unchecked this
memory growth will become a problem.

Regards,

Tony Sintes

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