>>>>IMO if you are assuming you will be doing a pile of queries in a short amount of time, leave the handle open.
>>>>
>>>>If the queries will be spread out over time (waiting for user action, etc) - open and close as needed.
>>>
>>>In the Signon screen, there's a call to get Student Name and Instructor Name from the Student Control Number and another to check password.
>>>
>>>In the DispQuestion screen, between each question it
>>>
>>>1) 'Scores' the answer
>>>2) Stores QuestionID, Answer, CorrectAnswer, Time Answered
>>>3) Checks to see if the next Question is an Experimental Item, if so, skips #4, selects the next ExpItemID
>>>4) Calculates an Information Function on all possible next questions, based on what's needed next and what gives the most information.
>>>5) Displays the next question.
>>>
>>>Would there be any performance hit to create/open for each call...and does a 'Close' clear the connection from memory. IE, I don't want to be creating multiple copies of QConn for each student.
>>
>>Closing a connection leaves the connection in memory. You can Open it again.
>>
>>If it is scoped to a SQLCommand or a function/procedure that goes out of scope then the connection goes away with it.
>>
>>If you are rolling through hundreds or thousands of questions quickly (like - per second), then there will be a performance hit. Still not horribly bad, but there will be one.
>>
>>You can watch and get metrics on the running code in VS. You might want to watch this to get a good idea of how your particular app is running.
>
>Thanks for the info. As for throughput, we're talking hundreds of questions per second per session. Average time to answer per student is (roughly) 15-30 seconds and as this is a timed test, I want to keep the time between answer and display of next question as short as possible.


You can always fetch the next question (and not display it yet) after you display the current question. Sort of using the 15-30 seconds time frame.
So you have the next question long before the current one gets answered


Update - or even better - fetch all the questions in advance in one go, then display them one by one