Should You Use Persistent Connections
One question that is frequently asked is should you use persistent connections to Oracle. Persistent connections allow PHP to recycle existing connections, reusing them after the previous web pages have completed. Non-persistent connections close automatically after the web page has completed. Persistent connections are faster because the cost of reconnecting is expensive, but there is additional resource overhead. As an alternative, Oracle allows you to pool and reuse server processes; this is called Shared Server (also known as MTS).
The author's benchmarks suggest that using non-persistent connections and the Shared Server configuration offer the best performance. If Shared Server is not an option, only then consider using persistent connections.
