After looking at some of the factors that can affect this, I think it may be important to know that most of the connections will be almost idle (in terms of interacting with the DB). The "users" are perl/dbi scripts which connect to the DB and spend the vast majority of the time doing things other than interacting with the DB. So a connection is consumed, but it's not really working very hard with the DB per-se. I am cleaning up some of that code by strategically connecting/disconnecting only when a DB interaction is required. But for my edification, is it roughly true that 2 connections working with the DB 100% of the time is equivalent to 20 connections @ 10% = 200 connections @ 1 % (if you know what I mean) ?
Hi,
Every open connection consumes a bit of resources witch is not a big deal if you keeping open a few more connections than you strictly needed. However when you keeping a few hundred idle connections those resources add up quickly. So don't do that if it's possible.
Likewise, establishing a new connection is resource costly process. So don't do that either if it's possible.
Long story short, if those connections don't use many different users then(as others already suggested) connection pooling will be the best solution.
