Should we always close javax.naming.InitialContext at client side of JBoss app?

Question

When we create a new InitialContext for remote access to Enterprise Java Beans, after work is done, should we always close the context via context.close() ?

Here is a code sample:

// Client side method
private void doSomeActionMethod() {
    RouteTransactionFacadeBeanRemote remote = null;
    final Hashtable jndiProperties = new Hashtable();
    jndiProperties.put(Context.URL_PKG_PREFIXES, "org.jboss.ejb.client.naming");
    Context context = null;
    try {
        context = new InitialContext(jndiProperties);
        remote = (RouteTransactionFacadeBeanRemote) context
                 .lookup("ejb:EJBEAR/EJBServer//RouteTransactionFacadeBean!facade.RouteTransactionFacadeBeanRemote");

        //DO SOMETHING WITH REMOTE EJB

        } catch (NamingException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        } finally {
            try {
                // Should we always do this?
                if (context != null) context.close();
            } catch (NamingException ex) {
                ex.printStackTrace();
            }
        }
    }

Answer 1

From javadocs:

Closes this context. This method releases this context's resources immediately, instead of waiting for them to be released automatically by the garbage collector. This method is idempotent: invoking it on a context that has already been closed has no effect. Invoking any other method on a closed context is not allowed, and results in undefined behaviour.

Although, garbage collector will collect them but instead of waiting for gc , you should close it by the provided function. So, my answer is, yes you should close this as well as any other resource that should be closed.