>Check out the following tests
>Testconnections2 returned 0.23 seconds, Testconnections3 returned 4.68 seconds, that's a factor of 20 slower. If there is any pooling done here, it's either not working for me, or it's kind of not very effective.
>What am I missing?
>

>    Public Sub testConnections2()
>        Dim cmd As New OleDbCommand
>        Dim da As New OleDbDataAdapter(cmd)
>        Dim conn As New OleDbConnection
>        Dim dt As New DataTable
>        conn.ConnectionString = My.Settings.b040_beConnectionString
>        conn.Open()
>        cmd.Connection = conn
>        Dim n As Long
>        Dim t As Date = Now
>        For i As Integer = 1 To 100
>            cmd.CommandText = "select Art_id from Artikel where Art_nr = '  125'"
>            n = cmd.ExecuteScalar()
>            cmd.CommandText = "select * from artikel where Art_Nr = '  125'"
>            da.Fill(dt)
>        Next
>        Debug.Print((Now() - t).ToString)
>    End Sub
>    Public Sub testConnections3()
>        Dim cmd As New OleDbCommand
>        Dim da As New OleDbDataAdapter(cmd)
>        Dim conn As New OleDbConnection
>        Dim dt As New DataTable
>        conn.ConnectionString = My.Settings.b040_beConnectionString
>        cmd.Connection = conn
>        Dim n As Long
>        Dim t As Date = Now
>        For i As Integer = 1 To 100
>            conn.Open()
>            cmd.CommandText = "select Art_id from Artikel where Art_nr = '  125'"
>            n = cmd.ExecuteScalar()
>            cmd.CommandText = "select * from artikel where Art_Nr = '  125'"
>            da.Fill(dt)
>            conn.Close()
>        Next
>        Debug.Print((Now() - t).ToString)
>    End Sub
>

Look at it the other way:
testConnection2 opened the connection once and took .23
Assuming testConnection3 also took .23 the first time then the next 99 took only 4.45 i.e ~ .045 per connection = 5 times faster.