ADO.NET in a Nutshell

Connection Pooling

Connection pooling recycles a set of open connections to save time—a key requirement in enterprise-level database applications. Without connection pooling, your application might be able to support a large throughput but will provide poor scalability. For example, you might find that your system can easily handle 10 simultaneous clients performing 1,000 transactions/minute but falters with 1,000 clients performing 10 transactions/minute, even though the overall transaction throughput is the same.

The problem is that acquiring a database connection automatically imposes some overhead. This is because the process of establishing a connection requires several lower-level operations, including a verification of security credentials. If your system is characterized by a large number of clients that frequently connect, perform a single operation, and then disconnect, the overhead required to create connections can become a crippling bottleneck. This is typical in a large stateless distributed application, such as an ASP.NET web site or web service.

To counteract this effect, most database access frameworks support connection pooling. Connection pooling works by retaining a pool of available connections. When a client requests a connection, it’s served directly from the available pool, rather than recreated. In a large system with a quick turnover of database connections, this automatic reuse can save CPU cycles and network bandwidth.

ADO.NET doesn’t include a connection-pooling ...