Proper way to handle ResultSet retrieved by JDBC (Converted to XML vs Validated Online)

Question

My Java application is processing a lot of information parsed from XML. For some methods, I need to validate some info in an SQL Database on another machine. I am using JDBC, currently for each validation, I call a DB Handling method that opens a connection and returns the result set to validate. I am not sure if I am taking the best design option. This seems very dummy and expensive to me. I am wondering if there are better practices.

• Is there is a proper way to have the connection open through the whole application run time so no time is wasted (opening connection) for every validation iteration (I might have hundreds of thousands).

• Should I build another application that retrieves all needed tables and convert them to XMLs that are saved on my machine. Later, my application parses them normally and have better access and performance

• I am open to any better suggestion

Answer 1

Of course you can use one db connection for whole life of application. Use Singleton pattern. If your program work long and do not use database for a longer time it may loose db connection (some kind of timeout on network equipment etc.). For such cases you can use db pool. Such pool should manage longer time of inactivity or give you separate db connections for separate threads.

I think your solution with converting data into XML is not good. Why do you want to convert it into XML? How often is this data changed? How big is the database you want to copy? How do you want to synchronize your local copy with database? I think that local copy in XML files adds too many problems. If data is small than maybe you can read it at start of your program, save it in some data structures and use to verify other data? It can even be SQLite or other small database. But I would go this way only if singleton or db pool performance is really weak.