Should an implementation of a data binding mechanism use WeakReferences or normal hard references on both the source and target objects? In other words, in the data binding context, should it hold the source and target objects as weak or hard references?
Which is the better practice, and why?
Weak references are eligible for the garbage collector and therefore may return NULL value. Weak references are useful especially for large objects, that can be easily recreated.
This may shed some light on that topics...
what is hard reference in java?
Understanding Weak References
Weak References