>You should always close a connection as soon as possible (and open it as late as possible). The simplest way to achieve this is probably to wrap it in a using{} block. If you have connection pooling enabled (the default) it shouldn't affect performance.
Can you provide an example of using{} block?
>If you're *not* closing connections it could account for the performance issues you were experiencing - they'll be hanging around until the GC gets to them. Did you monitor the number of open connections?
Where can I go to see that?