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java Connection Pooling from Oracle

I'm trying to make a connection pool following this link:
http://192.9.162.55/developer/onlineTraining/Programming/JDCBook/conpool.html
I don't understand something:
Somewhere in the class JDCConnectionDriver implements Driver you can find this method:
public static final String URL_PREFIX = "jdbc:jdc:";
public Connection connect(String url, Properties props)
throws SQLException {
if(!url.startsWith(URL_PREFIX) {
return null;
}
return pool.getConnection();
}
so, if you use mysql (for example), the url it will always start with jdbc... so the method connect it will never return you a connection...
Why is that?
Also I would like to ask you which is the best connection pooling framework...

so, if you use mysql (for example),
the url it will always start with
jdbc... so the method connect it will
never return you a connection... Why
is that?
This driver is specifically written to connect to a JDC Connection. That's why. It's looking for a url starting with jdbc:jdc: and not just jdbc:.
Also I would like to ask you which is
the best connection pooling
framework...
The most well known Connection Pooling library out there and used on many application servers and servlet containers is Apache Object Pool. The most common connection pooling is Apache DBCP (DataBase Connection Pooling).
Also, as stated by Rocky Triton, c3p0 is another JDBC library that included Connection and Statement Pooling.

A persistent connection with JDBC to MySQL

I have an application that connects to MySQL using JDBC. There are cases where the JDBC connection lies idle for hours (maybe even days) and its loosing its connection to MySQL and then excepts when it tries to execute a query. What is the best solution for this?

Keeping the connection open for an undertemined time is a bad practice. The DB will force a close when it's been open for a too long time. You should write your JDBC code so that it always closes the connection (and statement and resultset) in the finally block of the very same try block where you've acquired them in order to prevent resource leaking like this.
However, acquiring the connection on every hiccup is indeed a pretty expensive task, so you'd like to use a connection pool. Decent connection pools will manage the opening, testing, reusing and closing the connections themselves. This does however not imply that you can change your JDBC code to never close them. You still need to close them since that would actually release the underlying connection back to the pool for future reuse.
There are several connection pools, like Apache DBCP which is singlethreaded and thus poor in performance, C3P0 which is multithreaded and performs better, and Tomcat JDBC for the case that you're using Tomcat and wouldn't like to use the builtin DBCP due to bad performance.
You can create connection pools programmatically, here's an example with C3P0:
ComboPooledDataSource dataSource = new ComboPooledDataSource();
dataSource.setDriverClass("com.mysql.jdbc.Driver");
dataSource.setJdbcUrl("jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/dbname");
dataSource.setUser("username");
dataSource.setPassword("password");
Do it once during application's startup, then you can use it as follows:
Connection connection = null;
// ...
try {
connection = dataSource.getConnection();
// ...
} finally {
// ...
if (connection != null) try { connection.close(); } catch (SQLException ignore) {}
}
When you're running inside a JNDI-capable container like a servletcontainer (e.g. Tomcat), then you can also declare it as a java.sql.DataSource (Tomcat specific manual here). It will then use the servletcontainer-provided connection pooling facilities. You can then acquire the datasource as follows:
DataSource dataSource = (DataSource) new InitialContext().lookup("java:comp/env/jdbc/YourDataSourceName");

There are libraries, such as Apache's DBCP which can do connection pooling. A part of this is they can be setup to automatically test the connection when you go to use it (such as "SELECT NOW() FROM DUAL", or something else harmless) and automatically re-establish the connection transparently if necessary, allowing your application to pretend that the connection is everlasting.

Check here:
http://download.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/jdbc/basics/connecting.html
Basically, you should use DataSource and always do a getConnection() before using it. DataSource, unless there's something terribly wrong, will reconnect if necessary.

Best way to manage DB connections without JNDI

I have a website, in which currently I am getting 1000 page views. I am expecting it will go around 30k per day in future. Now the problem for me to manage the DB connections.
At present I am just connecting to DB directly from java program. I know it is worst design in the world. But for time being I have written like that.
I have plan to manage connection pooling using JNDI. But the problem is my hosting provider is not supporting JNDI.
Can anyone suggest me how to manage DB connections without jndi?

Connection pooling does not per se require the connections to be obtained by JNDI. You can also just setup and use a connection pool independently from JNDI. Let's assume that you'd like to use C3P0, which is one of the better connection pools, then you can find "raw" JNDI-less setup details in this tutorial.
Here's an extract of the tutorial:
ComboPooledDataSource cpds = new ComboPooledDataSource();
cpds.setDriverClass( "org.postgresql.Driver" ); //loads the jdbc driver
cpds.setJdbcUrl( "jdbc:postgresql://localhost/testdb" );
cpds.setUser("swaldman");
cpds.setPassword("test-password");
Create the datasource once during application's startup and store it somewhere in the context. The connection can then be acquired and used as follows:
Connection connection = null;
// ...
try {
connection = cpds.getConnection();
// ...
} finally {
// ...
if (connection != null) try { connection.close(); } catch (SQLException ignore) {}
}
Yes, closing in finally is still mandatory, else the connection pool won't be able to take the connection back in pool for future reuse and it'll run out of connections.

Connection timeout for DriverManager getConnection

I am trying to connect to DB using the standard JDBC way
connection = DriverManager.getConnection(url, username, password);
Is there a maximum value of timeout on the connection, how long does a connection live, can I increase the value. I want in cases the connection to be open forever , is it a good idea.

You can set the Timeout on the DriverManager like this:
DriverManager.setLoginTimeout(10);
Connection c = DriverManager.getConnection(url, username, password);
Which would imply that if the connection cannot open within the given time that it times out.
In terms of keeping a connection open forever, it is possible if you do not close the connection but it may not be a good idea. Connections should be closed as soon as you are finished with them.
If you want to optimise the opening and closing of connections then you can use a connection pool.

The value is usually DB-controlled. You have no control over it using code. It depends on the DB server used. It is usually around 30 minutes up to one hour.
On the other hand, keeping a Connection open forever is a very bad idea. Best practice is to acquire and close Connection, Statement and ResultSet in the shortest possible scope to avoid resource leaks and potential application crashes caused by the leaks and timeouts.
True, connecting the DB is an expensive task. If your application is supposed to run a relatively long time and to connect the DB fairly often, then consider using a connection pool to improve connecting performance. If your application is a webapplication, then take a look in the appserver's documentation, it usually provides a connection pooling facility in flavor of a DataSource. If it is a client application, then look for 3rd party connection pooling libraries which have proven their robustness with years, such as Apache Commons DBCP (commonly used, used in lot appservers), C3P0 (known from Hibernate) and Proxool (if you want XA connections).
Keep in mind, when using a connection pool, you still have to write proper JDBC code, i.o.w. acquire and close all the resources in the shortest possible scope. The connection pool will on its turn worry about actually closing the connection or just releasing it back to pool for further reuse.
You may get some more insights out of this article how to do the JDBC basics the proper way.
Hope this helps and happy coding.

Here is how to do it with Connector/J MYSQL driver:
String qqq = "jdbc:mysql://localhost/Test?connectTimeout=TIME_IN_MILLIS";
conn = DriverManager.getConnection(qqq, db_user, db_pass);
It worked for me after setLoginTimeout() did nothing.

Just reposting a more complete repost of a comment from user flamming_python as answer because it worked for me:
dbConnectionString = "jdbc:mysql://"+dbHost+":"+dbPort+"/"+dbTable+"?user="+dbUser+"&password="+dbPassword;
Properties properties = new Properties();
properties.put("connectTimeout", "2000");
dbConnect = DriverManager.getConnection(dbConnectionString, properties);
Original comment:
"LoL # your threads - you can do it quite simply by creating a Properties object prop, then prop.put("connectTimeout", "2000") (where the "2000" is the timeout in ms), and then pass your prop object to the DriverManager.getConnection() method along with your url"

As bestro suggested, it's possible to use a future with an associated timeout. For example:
ExecutorService executor = Executors.newSingleThreadExecutor();
Future<Connection> future = executor.submit(new Callable<Connection>() {
#Override
public Connection call() throws Exception {
Connection con = DriverManager.getConnection(url, username, password);
return con;
}
});
Connection con = null;
try {
con = future.get(5, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
} catch (InterruptedException | ExecutionException | TimeoutException ex) {
Logger.getLogger(Scratch.class.getName()).log(Level.SEVERE, null, ex);
}
executor.shutdownNow();
if (con == null) {
System.out.println("Could not establish connection");
} else {
System.out.println("Connection established!");
}

You can use ExecutorService interface from Java. Below is a sample of what you need to do.
Future<Boolean> future = executor.submit(YOUR_METHOD);
future.get(TIMEOUT_YOU_NEED, TimeUnit.SECONDS);

JDBC Connection Issue

I have create a getDBConnection method in my Java application. This returns a connection object, and hence I haven't closed this connection in this method itself.
Now, I am invoking this method from various methods in my application at regular intervals, and closing them inside a try - finally block. I thought this should free up the connection after use. However, I am seeing a large number of connections opened (about 50) in the MySQL Administrator's Server Connections tab.
//Defining a method to retrieve a database connection
// PropDemo is a properties class that retrieves Database related values from a file
public Connection getDBConnection() {
//Instantiating the Properties object
PropDemo prop = new PropDemo();
Connection con = null;
// Retrieving values from the parameters.properties file
String JdbcDriver = prop.getMessage("JdbcDriver");
String JdbcUrlPrefix = prop.getMessage("JdbcUrlPrefix");
String DBIP = prop.getMessage("DBIP");
String DBName = prop.getMessage("DBName");
String DBUser = prop.getMessage("DBUser");
String DBPassword = prop.getMessage("DBPassword");
try {
// Loading and instantiating the JDBC MySQL connector driver class
Class.forName(JdbcDriver).newInstance();
con = DriverManager.getConnection(JdbcUrlPrefix + DBIP + "/" + DBName, DBUser, DBPassword);
if (con.isClosed())
Logger.log("Connection cannot be established", "vm");
} catch (Exception e) {
Logger.log("Exception: " + e, "vm");
Logger.log(Logger.stack2string(e), "vm");
}
return con;
}
I am also closing the associated ResultSet and Statement Objects. What could be missing here?
I am planning to replace all the Statements with PreparedStatements for efficiency and security reasons. Will that help significantly? What else can be done?
EDIT:
This is just a core java application that is repeatedly quering for changes in some fields in a MySQL database through MySQL-JDBC connector. I am not using any framework like Spring or Hibernate.

Your code looks sane.
That's how you're creating a new connection.
Probably the error is where you close it.
You should close it in a finally block.
Some additional questions.
1) Are you sure those 50 conections come from this program ? Maybe there are some others comming from your same office. To confirm this you would need to stop the program, and look again in your connection monitor.
2) Does your application uses many connection simultaneously? Probably its a peak when you're using 50 at the same time.
If you can post the code where you close the connection. Chances are the problem is there.
Additionally I would suggest you to use a connection pool. You can build one your self or you can see the results from this page:
How many JDBC connections in Java?

Are you closing the connection object when you application closes as well?

Are you using your JDBC connection within a J2EE application server or with Hibernate?
Both of these tend to start out with a fairly high connection pool to begin with, so you would see a large number.
Check out the details on connection pooling.

You could take a Singleton approach to the problem and only create a new Connection object if the current one is null:
If (connectionObject != null){
return connectionObject;
}else {
//create new connection object
}
This will make sure that you only have one non-null connection at any time.