> In response to your questions:
>
> What are the implications of holding a connection to the database open
> forever (and running millions and millions of tiny transactions flat out
> through that connection)?
>
> What difference would it make if we dropped the connection periodically?
>
> We had a similar issue with long running connections, and finally
> resorted to dropping the connection periodically.
>
> One thing I noticed in our gstat -h output was that the oldest
> transaction number was not moving forward. I could not never figure out
> why. We use auto commit and ODBC, not explicit transactions. Dropping
> the connection every few hours resolved our problem.

Auto commit usually used commit retaining which retains the physical
transaction context thus your stuck transaction counters.


--
With regards,
Thomas Steinmaurer
http://www.upscene.com/

Professional Tools and Services for Firebird
FB TraceManager, IB LogManager, Database Health Check, Tuning etc.