Application Development Tips and Tricks > Application design and development > Unloading and reloading applications

Unloading and reloading applications

Application instances are normally unloaded because of garbage collection. The first time the garbage collector runs after all clients have disconnected from an application, the application will be unloaded. In other words, applications aren't unloaded immediately when all clients disconnect. Since application startup usually takes some time, it is better for the application to stay open for a little while, so that the next client that connects doesn't incur the startup cost.

By default, garbage collection happens once every 20 minutes (every 5 minutes for unused I/O threads). You can configure these values to be any number of minutes (greater than zero); for more information, see Managing Flash Communication Server Help.

Also, whenever you make changes to the main.asc file, you must reload the application for the changes to be applied. This will disconnect all users currently connected to the application. You can do this either through the Administration Console (see Managing Flash Communication Server) or the Communication App inspector (see Using the Communication App inspector).