> Here's the first part of the log messages, as you can see there is a 10
> second gap.

That is not your only problem....

> [2008-06-30 16:12:28,408 AbstractFBConnectionPoolDataSource,DEBUG] Trying to
> create connection, total connections 0, max allowed 2
>
> [2008-06-30 16:12:28,408 AbstractFBConnectionPoolDataSource,DEBUG] Trying to
> create connection, total connections 0, max allowed 2
>
> [2008-06-30 16:12:37,584 AbstractJavaGDSImpl,DEBUG] Got socket
>
> [2008-06-30 16:12:37,584 AbstractJavaGDSImpl,DEBUG] Got socket
>
> [2008-06-30 16:12:38,146 AbstractJavaGDSImpl,DEBUG] user.name: SYSTEM
>
> [2008-06-30 16:12:38,146 AbstractJavaGDSImpl,DEBUG] user.name: SYSTEM

The "distance" between these two lines is construction of 2 classes
which allocate about 32k byte arrays.

From the log it took more than 0.5 seconds - either some big issue with
the performance of your system or the log items are not correct.

Anyway, try using the IP address instead of name - sometimes DNS brings
some delays if configured incorrectly.

As to the problem - at the moment I do not see anything that can be
tuned in JDBC driver to make it run faster... for me it looks like some
incorrectly configured JVM and/or OS.

Roman