Using the Connection Monitor

When a connection monitor is enabled, each new Query Window opened for the server will start an application thread to monitor the status of the connection associated with the Query Window. The connection monitor can perform these operations based on an idle counter for each operation.  

• Ping Operation
• Execute Query Operation
• Auto-Commit Operation

The connection monitor for each Query Window starts only when at least one setting has been enabled in the Connection Monitor tab. A list of all running connections can be viewed from the Connections Monitor dialog. You can launch this dialog from Aqua Data Studio Tools menu.

Ping Operation

Users working in large Enterprises frequently run into network firewalls that disconnect idle network connections, or they do not have permission to request a change in behavior for the network firewall. In such scenarios, the firewall might terminate their connection frequently. Setting a Ping operation with a connection monitor will allow activity on the connection to prevent the connection from being terminated. The Ping operation is performed by calling the JDBC drivers Connection.isValid() API which "shall submit a query on the connection or use some other mechanism that positively verifies the connection is still valid when this method is called."

Execute Query Operation

Auto-Commit Operation

Users working in a production database environment frequently disable the auto-commit option when executing queries. Only after reviewing their query results, do they manually choose to rollback or commit the final result. Since rollback and commit operations are manual tasks, hectic work schedules might lead to having open transactions on a production database for an extended period. This may cause production issues for Database Administrators and other users using the production servers. By enabling the monitoring of the auto-commit disabled setting, the connection monitor will check to see how long auto-commit has been disabled and if the idle threshold has been exceeded then it will set the auto-commit to true. The user may also configure a warning threshold so that the connection monitor may warn the user of turning on auto-commit before it happens and provide the user a snooze option.

Setting Up the Connection Monitor

To set up the connection monitor

1. In the Server pane, right-click a server, and then choose Server Properties.
   
2. In the Edit Server Properties dialog, open the Connection Monitor tab.
3. Specify the desired settings of the connection monitor.
   
4. Click Save and reconnect to the server.
5. Open a new query window so that connection monitor can start monitoring.
   

Observations: Resetting Threshold Period for the Monitored Connections

The following table lists the actions that reset the threshold period for the monitored connections.

Action from the Toolbar	Ping	Execute	Auto-Commit
	✔	✔	✘
	✔	✔	✘
	✔	✘	✘
	✔	✘	✘
	✔	✘	✘
	✘	✘	✔
	✘	✘	✔
	✘	✘	✔
	✘	✔	✔
	✘	✔	✔
	✔	✔	✔
Change Database	✔	✔	✔
Change Schema (Only applies to databases with changeable schema)	✔	✔	✘