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.