One of the frequent complaints developers receive from DBAs is about misconfigured connection pools and insane number of connections applications tend to allocate. This session explains basics about connection pooling, why they are used, and how to configure them for availability and performance.

Modern web applications tend to operate on request-response model, where every request creates a new database connection. One way to limit the number of connections created and amortize connection setup costs is to use connection pooling. This presentation explains the basic mechanics behind connection pools, how to use them, and how to configure them in a way that both developers and DBAs can be happy.

Main themes of the presentation:

* How to use connection pooling for low response times and high throughput
* Challenges for availability that connection pooling presents
* Connection pool as a circuit breaker
* Technologies from Oracle: Universal Connection Pool, database resident connection pooling and connection manager
* Connection pooling and RAC: FCF, FAN and other cool acronyms