Connection Leak
A situation which occurs when a connection is opened, then forgotten about. This is known as a "leak", because each time it happens, one less connection is available for re-use.
The most common type of Connection Leak experienced in Java development, is when using a Connection Pool (such as DBCP). If there is an area of code which does not close the connection properly, every time that area of code is executed, a connection will "leak" from the pool. After all the available connections have been leaked, there will be no more available, and the application will hang.
Why?
- The application asks the pool for a connection, uses it to talk to the database, then returns it to the pool.
- There is typically a setting such as maxActive which limits the number of connections which the pool will hold.
- If maxActive=10, then the pool can be asked for up to 10 connections at the same time. (eg: 10 concurrent users). The application is expected to return the connections to the pool after completing the user's request.
- If the application never returns the connections, after these 10 run out, the pool has none left. In this case, a new caller will wait for a connection to become available. This makes it appear to have hung.
How can I stop Connection Leaks?
- Close connections, pay special attention to any error handling code, as it will be called less often and will be therefore harder to find if you have problems later.
- (Added by Anonymous user) Here's a tool that helps: http://garr.dl.sourceforge.net/project/connleakfinder/HowTo.html
How can I stop my application hanging if there are no more connections?
- Do not simply increase the maxActive attribute. This just hides the problem, making it harder to detect, and wastes server resources.
- Use the maxWait attribute in your connection pool (eg: DBCP), to limit the wait time to 5-10 seconds. After this time elapses, the application will show an error instead of hanging. This is usually preferable, as it is logged or can trigger an external error handling procedure.
- Use removeAbandoned, removeAbandonedTimeout and logAbandoned (if supported). This allows the pool to time the usage of a connection, and forcibly reclaim it. Using this method adds overhead to the connection time, but may be useful temporarily while debugging.
See Also
