Opening a database connection in a constructor, when should I close it? <p>well, I've been thinking of making database requests a little faster by keeping the connection to the database open as long as the object is being used. So I was thinking of opening the connection in the constructor of that class. Now the question is, how can I close the connection after I stopped using? I have to call close() somewhere, don't I? I've been reading about the finalize() method, but people seemed to be skeptical about usage of this method anywhere at all. I'd expect it to have something like a destructor, but Java doesn't have that, so?</p> <p>So could anyone provide me with a solution? Thanks in advance.</p>