Connection pooling

[Manuel Klimek]

we're using mysql for a multithreaded server application.
The server communicates via odbc under Win32 with
a linux mysql database. Now the app is (for historical
reasons) opening multiple extra odbc connections for every
client (via a new CDatabaseobject ) that connects to the server.
The server then tries to handle all client requests simultanously.

Now we know that by using a fixed amount of open connections
in our application we wouldn't have any problem, but this
is no option at the moment, because it would cause major changes
in a stable product line.

The problem that arises is, that the odbc <-> mysql connections
are not terminated correctly from a tcp/ip point of view, so
the open ports "hang around" for some minutes in the TIMED_WAIT
state. A customer of us mentioned that this is because both
sides of the tcp/ip connections (the odbc driver and the mysql server)
are closed at the same time, so neither side gets the "ack" from
the other side. As we open many connections with a rather high
frequency, we start running out of ports fast. Using MaxUserPort
in the registry helped us, to work around this restriction.

Now the questions are:
1) Is there a fix (planned) for the odbc
driver to close connections in a way that they don't hang around
in the TIMED_WAIT state, but are closed immediately?
2) Can the mysql odbc driver handle connection pooling by
itself on 'broken' apps :-). Like, you set it to a max. of 10
connections and it automagically reuses it's open connections
to the mysql server
3) On errors we often see Popup-Windows, which tell us that
the mysql driver encountered some problems. This blocks one
thread in our application and is very unhandy for a server
application. Can I switch this of?

Any help would be appriciated,
Manuel Klimek