Understanding EclipseLink, 2.4
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About Connection Pools

A connection pool is a service that creates and maintains a shared collection (pool) of data source connections on behalf of one or more clients. The connection pool provides a connection to a process on request, and returns the connection to the pool when the process is finished using it. When it is returned to the pool, the connection is available for other processes. Because establishing a connection to a data source can be time-consuming, reusing such connections in a connection pool can improve performance.

EclipseLink uses connection pools to manage and share the connections used by server and client sessions. This feature reduces the number of connections required and allows your application to support many clients.

You can configure your session to use internal connection pools provided by EclipseLink or external connection pools provided by a JDBC driver or Java EE container.

You can use connection pools in your EclipseLink application for a variety of purposes, such as reading, writing, sequencing, and other application-specific functions.

This section describes the following types of connection pools:

Internal Connection Pools

For non-Java EE applications, you typically use internal connection pools. By default, EclipseLink sessions use internal connection pools.

Using internal connection pools, you can configure the default (write) and read connection pools and you can create additional connection pools for object identity, or any other purpose.

Using internal connection pools, you can optimize the creation of read connections for applications that read data only to display it and only infrequently modify data.

External Connection Pools

For Java EE applications, you typically use external connection pools.

If you are using an external transaction controller (JTA), you must use external connection pools to integrate with the JTA.

Using external connection pools, you can use Java to configure the default (write) and read connection pools and create additional connection pools for object identity, or any other purpose.

Default (Write) and Read Connection Pools

A server session provides a read connection pool and a write connection pool. These could be different pools, or if you use external connection pooling, the same connection pool.

All read queries use connections from the read connection pool and all queries that write changes to the data source use connections from the write connection pool. You can configure attributes of the default (write) and read connection pools.

Whenever a new connection is established, EclipseLink uses the connection configuration you specify in your session's DatasourceLogin. Alternatively, when you use an external transaction controller, you can define a separate connection configuration for a read connection pool to avoid the additional overhead, if appropriate.

Sequence Connection Pools

An essential part of maintaining object identity is sequencing–managing the assignment of unique values to distinguish one instance from another. For more information, see About Cache Type and Size.

Sequencing involves reading and writing a special sequence resource maintained by your data source.

By default, EclipseLink includes sequence operations in a separate transaction. This avoids complications during the write transaction, which may lead to deadlocks over the sequence resource. However, when using an external transaction controller (such as a JTA data source or connection pool), EclipseLink cannot use a different transaction for sequencing. Use a sequence connection pool to configure a non-JTA transaction pool for sequencing. This is required only for table sequencing–not native sequencing.

In each server session, you can create one connection pool, called a sequence connection pool, that EclipseLink uses exclusively for sequencing. With a sequence connection pool, EclipseLink satisfies a request for a new object identifier outside of the transaction from which the request originates. This allows EclipseLink to immediately commit an update to the sequence resource, which avoids deadlocks.


Note:

If you use a sequence connection pool and the original transaction fails, the sequence operation does not roll back.


You should use a sequence connection pool, if the following applies:

  • You use table sequencing (that is, non-native sequencing).

  • You use external transaction controller (JTA).

You should not use a sequence connection pool, if the following applies:

  • You do not use sequencing, or use the data source's native sequencing.

  • You have configured the sequence table to avoid deadlocks.

  • You use non-JTA data sources.

Application-Specific Connection Pools

When you use internal EclipseLink connection pools in a session, you can create one or more connection pools that you can use for any application purpose. These are called named connection pools, as you can give them any name you want and use them for any purpose.

Typically, use these named connection pools to provide pools of different security levels. For example, the "default" connection pool may only allow access to specific tables but the "admin" connection pool may allow access to all tables.