The first step in any database application is establishing a connection to the database. When an application attempts to connect to a database, DB2 allocates an agent to service the request. This agent services all requests coming from this application. Once the application disconnects from the database, this agent is released. Allocating agents for every connection request may cause a bottleneck when the number of incoming connections increases. This overhead becomes more significant if the application executes small transactions. In such cases, the time required to get a connection is much higher than executing the entire transaction. To overcome this overhead, DB2 provides connection pooling.

Connection pooling is a technique which provides ready-to-use connections available for applications. DB2 provides techniques to preserve a connection after an application disconnects from the database. Once an application disconnects from...