How do I interpret the results of the ANTS Memory Profiler?

Question

I've been profiling my ASP.NET application with ANTS Memory Profiler 6, and have seen indications of memory leaks. However, I don't know whether or not the growths I'm seeing are supposed to be there or not (for instance, System.String grows a lot each snapshot. Should it?)

I don't understand the whole memory processso I don't know if I am interpreting the results correctly or not. How do I interpret the results of the ANTS Memory Profiler?

Answer 1

I have kind of been able to answer my own question while solving my memory issue. Although String may be on the top of the list most of the time, I shouldn't see the instance count just keep growing and growing. It turns out in my applcation that an Object I thought was being free'd actually wasn't which held a reference to some XML files which were of course held in Strings.

My test was to go to the home page of the web site -> Click to another page -> Back to the home page. Doing this should mean no new references should have been created (instance count should remain 0 (no growth)).

Hope this can help someone else.