Avoiding Classloader leaks

"OutOfMemoryError: PermGen" is a very common message to see after a few redeploys. The reason why it's so common is that it's amazingly easy to leak a class loader. It's enough to hold a single outside reference to an object instantiated from a class loaded by the said class loader to prevent that class loader from being GC-d.

http://java.dzone.com/articles/classloaderlocal-how-avoid