• for some databases (oracle), using persistent connections is a great way to save resources. We should hence allow the db file handler to work with persistent connection if the user so desires

• currently the db file handler cannot specify a charset for the connection. This can be slowing down access, as if the same db is in use for cluster files as for the normal connection, and configured to store data in utf8 internally, when the (2nd) connection made to the same db might not benefit of the same client-side charset definition, and thus get its data in a translated character set

• the oracle client is able to share (reuse) the same connection to the db when the same oci_connect() call is made many times in the same php page. This sharing does not happen if one connection is done with oci_connect and one with oci_pconnect, nor if one of the two connections specifies a charset and the other one does not

Proposal: add the following 2 settings to file.ini

[ClusteringSettings]
DBPersistentConnection=disabled
DBCharset=