A Practical Guide to Database Connection Pooling
Reusing database connections across requests instead of opening a new one each time.
Marcus Adeyemi
The key figures
- Limits
- databases cap concurrent connections
- Pools
- maintain a set of reusable connections
- Serverless
- environments can exhaust connections quickly
- Timeouts
- idle connections should be released
Why this is worth getting right
Databases have connection limits, and connection storms during traffic spikes take sites down.
Do this, not that
Do
- Size pools against database limits
- Use a connection pooler for serverless workloads
- Set sensible idle timeouts
- Monitor connection counts
- Test behavior at peak concurrency
Don’t
- Pool sizes larger than the database allows
- Unpooled connections in high-concurrency environments
- Ignoring connection errors under load
- Pools sized by guesswork
When to bring in help
Our advice Bring in help when databases refuse connections under load.
Where this comes from
- Microsoft Learn — Connection resiliency
- Laravel Documentation — Database: Getting started
The figures and practices above come from the sources listed.
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