createOrWaitForConnection and why we need a finally block

In previous versions of WebSphere Application Server this method actually had a name I liked better which was: createOrWaitForVictimConnection where the victim connection was one that was not closed within the same thread that opened it and eventually reaped by the app server. But either way, if you see this message timeout in your log file then that means somewhere, somehow someone has not closed a connection to a pooled resource properly. Get the following 3 words into someone's vocabulary... try, catch, finally. I can't emphasize enough how important it is to close the connection in the finally block. If you don't, then any exception that occurs can leave un-closed connections hanging around. If you are in a high volume environment you'll find this to be a serious bottleneck! Follow the following psuedo code...

Connection con;
try {
  con = ds.getConnection();
   // do some work
  methodThatUsesConnection(con);
} catch (Exception e) {
  //maybe log an error here if you like?
} finally {
  con.close();
}