Niphlod, Thanks (belatedly) for your valuable contribution and your test results. The only thing missing from your test is contention for database resources/connections and that is what prompted my initial question. In the past I worked on a client server application where we had performance issues re getting and releasing database connections (this was against a heavily used clinical trials Oracle database).
I'm very clear on the value of adding indexes to the database - however that is a bit tangential to my initial question - which was primarily focused on understanding the limitations/boundaries of using the DAL and connection management. I'm curious about your statement that the DAL will always use the same connection. My understanding is that the DAL closes and reopens the database connection for each request. Whether it's the same connection or not may not matter - once you close a db connection it goes back into the pool and you may/may not incur a delay in opening new connection. (In a lightly loaded system you may never see this issue however). I was under the impression that minimizing db connections was desirable to prevent thrashing. In the real world this may no longer be an issue. I do however recall this being an issue in the past and it's something that is seldom mentioned in Web development. Finally, just so there is no confusion here - I'm not criticizing web2py or the DAL here - my question is equally valid for Rails, Django etc - afaik all these frameworks close and reopen connections for each request. Again thanks for your thoughtful response to my initial question. BrendanC
