Hi,

I have a problem with the MS JDBC driver whereby when I try to use a
connection after a long time idle it reports:

[Microsoft][SQLServer 2000 Driver for JDBC]Connection reset by peer

I've read plenty discussion on the subject and am convinced that
rather than trying to stop sockets from ever being closed, I need to
detect and re-open the connection.

I can't afford to rejig all the database code to detect this exception
and retry so I want to have my home made connection pool test the
connection before giving it out.

My question is, is there a way of pinging the server through JDBC to
see if the physical connection is still alive? If I have to do a SQL
command, what would be a good example of something that is guaranteed
to get through to the server but not take up too much processing or
network?

it seems to be accepted that any good connection pool should have this
feature - so if anyone knows how they do it I would like to know.

many thanks for any suggestions

Andy