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.