Is SqlCommand.Dispose() required if associated SqlConnection will be disposed?

Just do this:

using(var connection = new SqlConnection(ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["MyConn"].ConnectionString))
using(var command = connection.CreateCommand())
{
   command.CommandText = "...";
   connection.Open();
   command.ExecuteNonQuery();
}

Not calling dispose on the command won't do anything too bad. However, calling Dispose on it will suppress the call to the finalizer, making calling dispose a performance enhancement.


In practice, you can skip Dispose. It doesn't free any resources. It doesn't even suppress finalization since the SQLCommand constructor does that.

In theory, Microsoft could change the implementation to hold an unmanaged resource, but I would hope they'd come out with an API that gets rid of the Component base class long before they'd do that.


Yes, you should, even if it the implementation is currently not doing much, you don't know how it is going to be changed in the future (newer framework versions for instance). In general, you should dispose all objects which implement IDisposable to be on the safe side.

However, if the operation is deferred and you don't control the full scope (for instance when working asynchroneously, or when returning an SqlDataReader or so), you can set the CommandBehavior to CloseConnection so that as soon as the reader is done, the connection is properly closed/disposed for you.


The safest policy is to always call Dispose() on an object if it implements IDisposable, either explicitly or via a using block. There may be cases where it is not required but calling it anyway should never cause problems (if the class is written correctly). Also, you never know when an implementation may change meaning that where the call was previously not required it is now definitely required.

In the example you've given, you can add an extra inner using block for the command, as well as maintaining the outer using block for the connection.