tomcat-dbcp vs commons-dbcp

Question

It seems there is a lot of confusion between these two connection pooling libraries. What I want to know is which one is better (if at all)?

Here are some points whi

Answer 1

It seems there is a lot of confusion between these two connection pooling libraries. What I want to know is which one is better (if at all)?

TL/DR: these are the same, don't use either of them.

Tomcat-dbcp is the original re-package of apache commons pool included in Tomcat distribution. To avoid class clash package was renamed to org.apache.tomcat.dbcp.dbcp.*

In Tomcat 7 (starting with 7.0.19 in July 2011) an additional connection pool was included in default Tomcat package (as part of tomcat-jdbc.jar) as alternative to stale apache commons implementation, called "The Tomcat JDBC Connection Pool":

https://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-7.0-doc/jdbc-pool.html

This article covers the differences between the two:

http://vigilbose.blogspot.com/2009/03/apache-commons-dbcp-and-tomcat-jdbc.html

Short summary why new Tomcat pool is better:

• actively supported
• much smaller, easier to understand and maintain (if you care to look at source)
• supports all commons-dbcp features + adds super useful ones like "initSQL", "validationInterval", "jdbcInterceptors" and more