Connection Management

Hi:

I have a Point-of-sale application that uses SQL Server2000 for the backend.
Basically, the users perform various functions boiling down to login (check
password from a table) and data entry (insert a food entry). Previously, I
would open a new ADO 2.7 connection to the database each time one of these
types of database accessing functions needed to be performed - but I noticed
that sometimes the DB would freeze the application for 20 seconds or so - or
even cause a timeout error.

To fix this, I open a DB connection when the application first starts,
keeping it open for the life of the application - each time a function needs
to access the DB, it just uses the applications (global) connection that is
constantly open and connected.

This seems to have fixed the problem, however, I am curious, is this an OK
way to handle the connections - keeping in mind that there are four separate
stations - each running the application - at the same time. Therefore, I
have 4 constantly open connections at the same time.


Thanks and regards,

Ryan Kennedy