posted by dmikusa on January 23, 2012 03:14 PM

One of the new features with Tomcat 7 is a replacement to the commons-dbcp connection pool. While the commons-dbcp connection pool works fine for small or low traffic applications, it is known to have problems in highly concurrent environments (think multi-core/multi-cpu).

Fortunately, this is where the JDBC Connection Pool excels. It is a completely new connection pool which has been written from the ground up, with a focus on highly concurrent environments and performance.

Given its focus on high concurrency and performance, many users are finding that the JDBC Connection Pool can be great for use in a production environment. This article will discuss the features and options which make using the JDBC Connection Pool a great choice.

The Basics

Getting started with the JDBC Connection Pool is very simple. It was purposefully designed as a drop-in replacement for commons-dbcp and as such, if you've ever used commons-dbcp you'll be immediately familiar with the configuration for the JDBC Connection Pool.

This means the most existing commons-dbcp users can switch to the JDBC Connection Pool by simply adding the following property to their configuration factory=”org.apache.tomcat.jdbc.pool.DataSourceFactory”.

What about the other commons-dbcp configuration options? You don't need to change them at all. Virtually all of the commons-dbcp configuration options are supported by the JDBC Connection Pool. Including but not limited to: testWhileIdle, testOnBorrow, testOnReturn, maxActive, minIdle, maxWait, initialSize, removeAbandoned, removeAbandonedTimeout and logAbandoned.

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