How does the garbage collection work in ArcGIS Engine Java?
Garbage collection in the Engine works similarly to any other Java application. When an object goes out of reference it gets garbage collected and the resources used by the underlying COM objects are released as well. You can also force an object to be garbage collected by using the Cleaner class in the com.esri.arcgis.system package and call the release method to specifically release resources for an ArcObjects component.