I'm developing a webapp that is going to be making frequent DB operations. I know that DB connections are expensive and that developers pool connections to prevent the overhead of frequent instantiation. Is this design pattern still necessary? I ask because I vaguely recall skimming over an article that stated that this design pattern is not needed anymore with newer versions of Java.
Currently, our webapps make infrequent calls to our database and as such I simply use a static getConnection() method to create new Connections, which I explicitly close at the end of their use. I realize that our setup, Tomcat 5.5 on Java 1.4.2, will almost certainly require connection pooling. But does newer versions of Java obviate this need? Any pointers to relevant (ie. JDK 1.4.2) tutorials on this topic would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
