Database networking question

I have a networking question for any database networking gurus. I believe that many (perhaps most) commercial databases utilize a reliable, connection-oriented transport protocol like TCP and I have a (hopefully simple) implementation question: 1. In a client/server scenario, does the client open and close a connection for each request/transaction or can multiple transactions utilize the same connection? Do the transactions have to all be from the same user process, or does this not matter? Please explain how this works if you know. If you post a reply, please e-mail a copy directly to me also as I do not get to read this news group that often. Thanks, Tom C e-mail: connolly@udel.edu