Now you've wandered into apache performance tuning / DB
connections land. I believe (and I'm no expert on this)
the DB handles are only torn-down when the httpd process
ends. You can set your apache configuration (MinSpareServers, MaxSpareServers,
MaxClients, MaxRequestsPerChild etc...) to regulate the # of simultaneous HTTPD processes.
If your getting enough hits to handle 400 simultaneous
httpd process at peak then maintaining those connections off-peak
won't be extra load. However, your DB may drop the client'd
DB connection if it had been idle for a while, Apache::DBI is
smart enough to detect this and reconnect when called again if it
was dumped like this. When tuning apache for maximal performance
one typical trick is to have several servers with diffrent
configurations running. One to handle all the .cgi's (w/ APache::DBI)
and another for images and static content (no Apache::DBI or mod_perl or
anything else needed on this one). That way you're not "wasting" connections
on servers that aren't connected. | [reply] |