John,

I am only approx. 125 pages into the 800+ page "Inside SQL Server 7.0" book but in there it is rather forcefully recommended that a connection be left in place as long as any other work is expected to come along, even if that is projected to be a long time away. Far less overhead, they say.

Jim N

PS That would be applicable to the *real* system and would have nothing to do with the MSDE shipped with Access 2000 or Office 2000.



>>Usually, when we write an application, we connect to a remote datasource when
>>user starts an application and disconnect when user finishes. Otherwise, we'll >get a perfomance problem. Do you think it reasonable to connect just before >updates, deletes, inserts, and queries and disconnect immediately after?
>
>Sure. Why should your server maintain the overhead for a connection that is idle. This is one of the features of MTS, the ability to pool connections. Even if you don't use MTS, there is still a benefit in only connecting when you need to update/fetch data.