yes, it was the constructor that was taking all the time.
this is excellent now! with the javax connection pool object, the first connection was the same ( 2 seconds ) then each new page was 1/2 second. this is more like the results i was expecting.
the problem with that is that it only lasted for about 3 to 4 pages, then wouldn't work anymore.
well the api provides an as400connectionpool object, but it was too slow before. now that i know how to use the object efficiently, it works great!
the initial connection is slower, but the pool continues to work. the as400 pool has a lot of other options such as pool.fill to set how many connections to make available, and i can set a timeout limit too.
if you are still interested in looking, here are the ibm access classes i'm using:
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/iserie...zahh/page1.htm
last question, i have seen methods named init() before .. is there anything special about naming a method init() ? or just a common practice.
thanks SO much for that help! i was getting nervous that the performance of my apps would be slow. i'm sure my users will appreciate it too!