My god. NO!!! It's the dreaded "me too" post!

I like a combination of these ideas.

Maintain a module that will give you the open handle, that uses a config file to grab it. That way you can play all the games you want with specifying config files and datasources hot.

We have a bunch of code that we all of a sudden needed to link to multiple databases (*sniff* *sniff* legacy system? Yep, the tracks are still warm.) And that approach saved our collective posteriors.

$.02

- V