title: When does garbage collection happen for a class with static data
body: <p>I want to make some data easily available throughout my application. I have a few variables in a class with static data, which get written to and read from at several different points.</p>
  
  <p>This worked fine for a while, but now at one point where I expect to be able to retrieve an ArrayList all I get is "null".</p>
  
  <p>I am wondering if the static class has been sent to the "garbage collector". Not sure what's going on, if you can help that would be much appreciated.</p>