ODBC Connection Pooling...Any info?

[peaches1240]

I have a report created in CR 8.5 and running on CE 8.0 that connects to an SQL db and an Informix db. This report will not complete at certain times of the day. For example, if scheduled at 4:30 am, it sits in a running state indefinitely, if scheduled at 7:00 am, it completes successfully. Crystal Tech support suggested I do an ODBC trace to find the problem. While I was there I noticed the Connection Pool tab and enabled connection pooling on both db's. My report ran successfully at 4:30 am this morning. My question is, what exactly does connection pooling do? I asked the CE Tech Support rep and she didn't know either. It appears to keep a db connection open for an extended period of time.

Any information that can be provided will help me. I just want to understand why it worked.

Thanks

 

[synapsevampire]

I'd guess that there's a backup or some other process which is locking tables at 4:30AM.

Connection Pooling Definition:
When enabled, connections that are freed by an ODBC client will not be freed in the actual driver if an ODBC client requests the same type of connection within the pooling timeout. If this does not happen, however, the ODBC Driver Manager will free the connection in the driver. In some environments, such as in ASP and PHP web pages, connections are typically created and freed in a short window, and if many people are hitting the site in a small time window, connection pooling can save time by "recycling" active connections for new connection requests.

-k

http://www.informeddatadecisions.com

kai@informeddatadecisions.com