Rod,

Not to disagree with you, but I'm curious as to why you don't mention recommending the use of Web Services to connect to your data when you have a WinForm app. Unless your data is always local, the best way to connect to it, IMHO, is via Web Services.

~~Bonnie


>Kevin
> This very much depends.
>
> Are your connections local ? If so then you could probably create them on demane.
>
> Howerver, if you are on a WAN (where the connection time is slow) I would look into creating them up front.
>
>In my WinForms applications I generally open a connection and keep it open.
>
>In my webforms apps (done with web services) I open and close them on demand. In a distributed environment you can get away with this better because of connection pooling.
>
>ROdman