Connection Pooling for PHP based website using Oracle 11g database

Question

I am using Oracle 11g database server and now I am getting to see that OCI's persistent connection isn't much of a use, and a new connection is created anyway when a new user accesses the page. I would like to have a pool of connections which are used, and no new connections are not created. I came across DRCP (database resident connection pooling), but I am unable to understand how to set the number of connections that can be created per server.

Questions

• From the documentation available on the Oracle website, I can set the minimum and maximum number of pooled servers, but where would I be setting the number of connections??
• Has anyone worked with Oracle 11g's database resident connection pooling?
• If the database servers are unix boxes, can we do any ODBC connection pooling??

Answer 1

where would I be setting the number of connections?

You can specify the min and max number of connections in the pool using

SQL>execute dbms_connection_pool.configure_pool(null, minsize=>10, maxsize=>100);

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If the database servers are unix boxes, can we do any ODBC connection pooling?

I'm not quite sure why you're asking this. You can take advantage of DRCP via OCI in PHP, as long as you have the Oracle 11g client. Just specify your connection string like myhost.dom.com:1521/sales:POOLED and make your connections using oci_pconnect().

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Here's a few resources that may be of help:

• Oracle DRCP Whitepaper
• DRCP entry on OraDBPedia
• PHP OCI manual

Answer 2

BenV is right.⁺¹  Since it sounds like you don't want your pool size to change, you should set the minsize the same as the maxsize. Here are some additional Oracle entries on DRCP:

• About Database Resident Connection Pooling (Database Administrator's Guide)
• Configuring Database Resident Connection Pooling (Database Administrator's Guide)
• About Database Resident Connection Pooling (Net Services Administrator's Guide)
• Database Resident Connection Pooling (Call Interface Programmer's Guide)

The first link has a comparison of Dedicated Server, Shared Server, and DRCP. Shared server is another route you could consider, but it sounds like DRCP might be a better fit.