MDAC 2.5 SDK - ODBC Programmer's Reference
Chapter 6: Connecting to a Data Source or Driver

ODBC Connection Pooling

Connection pooling enables an application to use a connection from a pool of connections that do not need to be reestablished for each use. Once a connection has been created and placed in a pool, an application can reuse that connection without performing the complete connection process.

Using a pooled connection can result in significant performance gains, because applications can save the overhead involved in making a connection. This can be particularly significant for middle-tier applications that connect over a network or for applications that repeatedly connect and disconnect, such as Internet applications.

In addition to performance gains, the connection pooling architecture enables an environment and its associated connections to be used by multiple components in a single process. This means that stand-alone components in the same process can interact with each other without being aware of each other. A connection in a connection pool can be used repeatedly by multiple components.

Note   Connection pooling can be used by an ODBC application exhibiting ODBC 2.x behavior, as long as the application can call SQLSetEnvAttr. When using connection pooling, the application must not execute SQL statements that change the database or the context of the database, such as changing the <database name>, which changes the catalog used by a data source.

An ODBC driver must be fully thread-safe, and connections must not have thread affinity to support connection pooling. This means the driver is able to handle a call on any thread at any time and is able to connect on one thread, to use the connection on another thread, and to disconnect on a third thread.

The connection pool is maintained by the Driver Manager. Connections are drawn from the pool when the application calls SQLConnect or SQLDriverConnect and are returned to the pool when the application calls SQLDisconnect. The size of the pool grows dynamically, based on the requested resource allocations. It shrinks based on the inactivity timeout: If a connection is inactive for a period of time (it has not been used in a connection), it is removed from the pool. The size of the pool is limited only by memory constraints and limits on the server.

The Driver Manager determines whether a specific connection in a pool should be used according to the arguments passed in SQLConnect or SQLDriverConnect, and according to the connection attributes set after the connection was allocated.

When the Driver Manager is pooling connections, it needs to be able to determine if a connection is still working before handing out the connection. Otherwise, the Driver Manager keeps on handing out the dead connection to the application whenever a transient network failure occurs. A new connection attribute has been defined in ODBC 3.x: SQL_ATTR_CONNECTION_DEAD. This is a read-only connection attribute that returns either SQL_CD_TRUE or SQL_CD_FALSE. The value SQL_CD_TRUE means that the connection has been lost, while the value SQL_CD_FALSE means that the connection is still active. (Drivers conforming to earlier versions of ODBC can also support this attribute.)

A driver must implement this option efficiently or it will impair the connection pooling performance. Specifically, a call to get this connection attribute should not cause a round trip to the server. Instead, a driver should just return the last known state of the connection. The connection is dead if the last trip to the server failed, and not dead if the last trip succeeded.

In order to prevent unwanted repeated attempts by the Driver Manager to reestablish a connection when connection pooling is enabled, you can set ODBCGetTryWaitValue. ODBCSetTryWaitValue saves the information in the registry at the following location:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Odbc\Odbcinst.ini\ODBC Connection Pooling\Retry Wait

If there is a bad connection in the pool, the ODBC Driver Manager will attempt to connect before the connection can be reused for the first time. If the connection still fails, the ODBC Driver Manager returns the error and marks the connection with the time. From that point until the RetryWait value expires, the ODBC Driver Manager returns a failure without testing the connection.

To use a connection pool, an application performs the following steps:

1. Enables connection pooling by calling SQLSetEnvAttr to set the SQL_ATTR_CONNECTION_POOLING environment attribute to SQL_CP_ONE_PER_DRIVER or SQL_CP_ONE_PER_HENV. This call must be made before the application allocates the shared environment for which connection pooling is to be enabled. The environment handle in the call to SQLSetEnvAttr should be set to null, which makes SQL_ATTR_CONNECTION_POOLING a process-level attribute. If the attribute is set to SQL_CP_ONE_PER_DRIVER, a single connection pool is supported for each driver. If an application works with many drivers and few environments, this might be more efficient because fewer comparisons may be required. If set to SQL_CP_ONE_PER_HENV, a single connection pool is supported for each environment. If an application works with many environments and few drivers, this might be more efficient because fewer comparisons may be required. Connection pooling is disabled by setting SQL_ATTR_CONNECTION_POOLING to SQL_CP_OFF.
   
   
2. Allocates an environment by calling SQLAllocHandle with the HandleType argument set to SQL_HANDLE_ENV. The environment allocated by this call will be an implicit shared environment because connection pooling has been enabled. The environment to be used is not determined, however, until SQLAllocHandle with a HandleType of SQL_HANDLE_DBC is called on this environment.
   
   
3. Allocates a connection by calling SQLAllocHandle with InputHandle set to SQL_HANDLE_DBC, and the InputHandle set to the environment handle allocated for connection pooling. The Driver Manager attempts to find an existing environment that matches the environment attributes set by the application. If no such environment exists, one is created, with a reference count (maintained by the Driver Manager) of 1. If a matching shared environment is found, the environment is returned to the application and its reference count is incremented. (The actual connection to be used is not determined by the Driver Manager until SQLConnect or SQLDriverConnect is called.)
   
   
4. Calls SQLConnect or SQLDriverConnect to make the connection. The Driver Manager uses the connection options in the call to SQLConnect (or the connection keywords in the call to SQLDriverConnect) and the connection attributes set after connection allocation to determine which connection in the pool should be used.

   Note   How a requested connection is matched to a pooled connection is determined by the SQL_ATTR_CP_MATCH environment attribute. For more information, see SQLSetEnvAttr.

5. Calls SQLDisconnect when done with the connection. The connection is returned to the connection pool and becomes available for reuse.

   Note   For more information about connection pooling, see "Connection Pooling Considerations" in Chapter 17, "Programming Considerations."