In process DLL woes...

Hello to all.

My problem concerns the use of an 'in process' DLL. That is to say, a DLL which occupies the same 'processing space' as the parent application - which, in this case, is my VB coded application.

The problem is a simple one to describe. The DLL provides an ODBC interface to a totally in house developed database that the company I have worked for have had for years. Using this DLL allows you to run SQL queries against the database and get the results back in an ADO recordset.

The thing is this... When my program creates the ODBC object, the object is loaded into memory, fine. Nice. However, when my VB program later sets the object reference to NOTHING, the darned DLL is still in memory. Only when I physically quit my application is the DLL freed.

Is this normal for a VB app? The guys here think it's a VB 'feature' and their (not so) helpful advice was to code the app in C. No thanks!

Any enlightenment would indeed be, er, enlightening.

Cup of tea, anyone?