> I'm not sure of your language here. Can you explain a little more?
> "open a database instance"
By "open a database instance", I refer to opening a single database connection.
> If you have a "web application", database connections are made
> and dropped each time a page is requested.
That is what I did when I developed my first FB web application. These are the side effects I experienced of doing so in order of importance:
1. A very small delay with each connect to the database. The connection process seems too expensive for a web application.
2. Data buffering or cache was constantly being lost because of the connect/disconnects.
The side effects to this is that your web application will not be very 'snappy'. Additionally, under an automated test that hits your app, you will notice serious disk thrashing and processor consumption by FB.
Please note that my FB server runs on Windows and don't know if the same happens under a different OS.
My application is on the web and I'd post the URL here so you can see how responsive it is but I think that this would violate the newsgoup rules. Anyway, if you want, I can send you the URL via email so you can see the instant response in action for yourself, thanks to not connecting/disconnecting.
Still wondering if there is a FB test to see if a connection is disconnected though...