>How many connections should an application have in use at any one time and what might be a stategy for managing them?
>
>Thank you!

I have an app that uses connections to 3 different servers -- remote Oracle server in North Carolina [I am in Dallas], a MS Access MDB and a local Oracle server. While only 1 is a constant connection [the one to NC] during the application duration, I do not see a need to limit the number of connections unless there is a limit on the backend. For my Oracle connections, I use a shared connection. My retrieval times are so short because I only retrieve a small set of records at a time, I do not need multiple connections to the same source. This also makes my dial-up users very happy as well.

When I start my app, each user has to provide their user ID and password for the remote Oracle DB for verification. I then open a dummy table that hold the connection open to that Oracle DB until the app is shutdown. Therefore, any other views opened from that DB do not require re-entry of a user ID and password, nor do I have to store that ID and password [not a good idea security wise]. The local Oracle server just has some select-only tables for a generic Oracle ID and password that is stored with the connection in the DBC.