Connection pooling

Connection pooling refers to the behavior where IBM i Access ODBC connections are left open after the application has requested to disconnect them. Connections that are in the pool can be reused by the same application avoiding the time consuming operation of creating a brand new connection.

To get an application to use connection pooling support with the IBM i Access ODBC driver two basic steps must be taken:

1. Connection pooling support has to be enabled for the driver. To enable this support, open ODBC Administrator, click on the Connection Pooling tab, double-click on Client Access ODBC Driver (32-bit), and switch the checkbox to indicate to pool connections to this driver. There is also a spot on the window to fill in the amount of time that unused connections remain in the pool.
2. Connection pooling support has to be enabled by the application. An application does this by setting the SQL_ATTR_CONNECTION_POOLING environment attribute as part of the connection process.

For more details on connection pooling support, search for ODBC at the Microsoft Web site.