Thanks Larry.  I'll start looking at it.

OK, Larry, I wasn't able to make your test program fail on this end.  So, thinking that your test program was pretty definitive, I rolled back my ES debug version to the 1.7.7.0 version and tried it.  It failed just like you said.  I didn't think I had made a change, but apparently I did.  Looking through our TFS logs, I found where the SqlDataReader wasn't being properly closed (which closes the connection, because the command is executed with CommandBehavior.CloseConnection since we no longer have a reference to the connection to close it).  Those connections were left open and had to be garbage collected just like the other situation.  

Hi Ben,

That fixed it! I ran a few tests and the save on transaction is slightly faster. Thank you for your help. When you get a chance please post the 1.7.7.1 source code installer to the download area.

-Larry

Will do!  Thanks for your patience while we figured that one out, Larry