SQLite Android Database Cursor window allocation of 2048 kb failed

Question

I have a routine that runs different queries against an SQLite database many times per second. After a while I would get the error

"android.database.CursorWindowAllocationException: - Cursor window allocation of 2048 kb failed. # Open Cursors = " appear in LogCat.

I had the app log memory usage, and indeed when usage reaches a certain limit the I get this error, implying it runs out. My intuition tells me that the database engine is creating a NEW buffer (CursorWindow) every time I run a query, and even though .close() the cursors, neither the garbage collector nor SQLiteDatabase.releaseMemory() are quick enough at freeing memory. I think the solution may lie in "forcing" the database to always write into the same buffer, and not create new ones, but I have been unable to find a way to do this. I have tried instantiating my own CursorWindow, and tried setting SQLiteCursor to it, but to no avail.

?Any ideas?

EDIT: re example code request from @GrahamBorland:

public static CursorWindow cursorWindow = new CursorWindow("cursorWindow"); 
public static SQLiteCursor sqlCursor;
public static void getItemsVisibleArea(GeoPoint mapCenter, int latSpan, int lonSpan) {
query = "SELECT * FROM Items"; //would be more complex in real code
sqlCursor = (SQLiteCursor)db.rawQuery(query, null);
sqlCursor.setWindow(cursorWindow);
}

Ideally I would like to be able to .setWindow() before giving a new query, and have the data put into the same CursorWindow everytime I get new data.

Answer 1

Most often the cause for this error are non closed cursors. Make sure you close all cursors after using them (even in the case of an error).

Cursor cursor = null;
try {
    cursor = db.query(...
    // do some work with the cursor here.
} finally {
    // this gets called even if there is an exception somewhere above
    if(cursor != null)
        cursor.close();
}

To make your App crash when you are not closing a cursor you can enable Strict Mode with detectLeakedSqlLiteObjects in your Applications onCreate:

StrictMode.VmPolicy policy = new StrictMode.VmPolicy.Builder()
   .detectLeakedClosableObjects()
   .detectLeakedSqlLiteObjects()
   .penaltyDeath()
   .penaltyLog()
   .build();
StrictMode.setVmPolicy(policy);

Obviously you would only enable this for debug builds.