Two things, have you tried upgrading to the latest version, 6.0? And how do 
you read the initial document and the files?

-- 

Joe Fawcett (MVP - XML)

http://joe.fawcett.name

"Darren Morby" <DarrenMorby@d...> wrote in message 
news:07584BA0-4CB3-47B6-B020-048C072FB29A@m......
> Hi, I'm using MSXML4 and I'm having an issue with memory allocation which
> appears to be a memory leak, but isn't exactly. Let me explain.
>
> I have this one XML file (the "IXM" file) that contains the names of 148
> other XML files (the "external" files). What is supposed to happen is that
> the app reads the IXM file, then reads each external file named in the IXM
> file, then copies the external file's data to the database.  The problem 
> is
> that after about 36 external files, it runs out of memory. Each external 
> file
> is generally between 104 MB and 106 MB, but some are larger. The largest 
> is
> 136 MB.  The external files are in ASCII.
>
> I run performance monitor and monitor virtual bytes.  It seems that the
> virtual bytes are increasing all the time, and by the time of the 36th
> external file, virtual bytes tries to exceed 2 GB, and it bombs.
>
> Based on experiments I've done, I conclude the following:
>
> 1. When MSXML is allocating memory, it is not doing so on the process 
> heap,
> but on its own heap, so memory looks like this:
>
> [PROCESS-HEAP][HEAP-1][HEAP-2][MSXML-HEAP-1][MSXML-HEAP-2]
>
> 2. The SAX parser in MSXML reads the entire external file into a 
> contiguous
> region of memory before it will call the content handler.
>
> 3. If MSXML cannot load the entire external file into a contiguous region 
> of
> memory in its own heaps, it allocates another heap:
>
> [PROCESS-HEAP][HEAP-1][HEAP-2][MSXML-HEAP-1][MSXML-HEAP-2][MSXML-HEAP-3]
>
> [PROCESS-HEAP][HEAP-1][HEAP-2][MSXML-HEAP-1][MSXML-HEAP-2][MSXML-HEAP-3][MSXML-HEAP-4]
>
> [PROCESS-HEAP][HEAP-1][HEAP-2][MSXML-HEAP-1][MSXML-HEAP-2][MSXML-HEAP-3][MSXML-HEAP-4][MSXML-HEAP-5]
>
> It does not seem to be freeing the extra heaps that it is creating.  So
> eventually, it will try to allocate a memory block that's too big for the
> existing heaps and too big to allocate a new heap.
>
> Assuming that's the case:
>
> 1. How do I free up all the heaps that MSXML allocates, preferably between
> external files?
>
> 2. How do I get MSXML to use the app's heap instead of creating its own?
>
> 3. Is there any other strategy that I could try?
>
> -- Thanks
> -- Darren --