Question

Currently, I load the below custom driver (TestDriver.java), get a connection, create a Statement, execute a query, gets the results and close the connection. I open and close a connection for each query. Is this common practice or is there an standard way to share the open connections?

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Class.forName("com.sql.TestDriver");
        java.sql.Connection conn = DriverManager.getConnection("jdbc:test://8888/connectme", props);
        Statement stmt = conn.createStatement;
        ResultSet rs = stmt.executeQuery("select * from table");
        //loop through rs and pull out needed data
        conn.close();  
    }


    public class TestDriver implements java.sql.Driver{
        private final TestSchema schema;
        private Properties props = null;
        static {
            try {
                DriverManager.registerDriver(new TestDriver());
            } catch (SQLException e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }

        protected TestDriver() throws SQLException {
            schema = TestSchemaFactory.getInstance().getDbSchemaFromFile(SCHEMA_FILE);
            //loads in and parses a file containing tables, columns used for business logic
        }
        public Connection connect(String url, Properties info) 
                throws SQLException {
           TestSqlConnection conn=null;
           //connect logic here
           return conn; //will return an instance of TestSqlConnection
        }

    @Override
    public boolean jdbcCompliant() {
        return false;
    }
}

Answer 1

Yes, it’s more common to use a database connection pool. This will allow connections to be reused without the overhead or closing/re-opening. Here’s a link to DBCP which is one implementation of a database connection pool: http://commons.apache.org/dbcp/