passing DB Connection object to methods

Question

Was wondering if it is recomended to pass a database connection object around(to other modules) or let the method (in the other module) take care of setting it up. I am lea

Answer 1

Personally, I like storing a stack of my current open connection and transactions on top of the Thread Local Storage using SetData and GetData. I define a class that manages my connections to the database and allow it to use the dispose pattern. This saves me the need to pass connections and transactions around, which is something that I think clutters and complicates the code.

I would strongly recommend against leaving it up to the methods to open connections every time they need data. It will leads to a really bad situation where it is both hard to manage transactions throughout the application and too many connections are opened and closed (I know about connection pooling, it is still more expensive to look up a connection from the pool than it is to reuse an object)

So I end up having something along these lines (totally untested):

class DatabaseContext : IDisposable {

    List currentContexts;
    SqlConnection connection;
    bool first = false; 

    DatabaseContext (List contexts)
    {
        currentContexts = contexts;
        if (contexts.Count == 0)
        {
            connection = new SqlConnection(); // fill in info 
            connection.Open();
            first = true;
        }
        else
        {
            connection = contexts.First().connection;
        }

        contexts.Add(this);
    }

   static List DatabaseContexts {
        get
        {
            var contexts = CallContext.GetData("contexts") as List;
            if (contexts == null)
            {
                contexts = new List();
                CallContext.SetData("contexts", contexts);
            }
            return contexts;
        }
    }

    public static DatabaseContext GetOpenConnection() 
    {
        return new DatabaseContext(DatabaseContexts);
    }


    public SqlCommand CreateCommand(string sql)
    {
        var cmd = new SqlCommand(sql);
        cmd.Connection = connection;
        return cmd;
    }

    public void Dispose()
    {
        if (first)
        {
            connection.Close();
        }
        currentContexts.Remove(this);
    }
}



void Test()
{
    // connection is opened here
    using (var ctx = DatabaseContext.GetOpenConnection())
    {
        using (var cmd = ctx.CreateCommand("select 1"))
        {
            cmd.ExecuteNonQuery(); 
        }

        Test2(); 
    }
    // closed after dispose
}

void Test2()
{
    // reuse existing connection 
    using (var ctx = DatabaseContext.GetOpenConnection())
    {
        using (var cmd = ctx.CreateCommand("select 2"))
        {
            cmd.ExecuteNonQuery();
        }
    }
    // leaves connection open
}