Dbi best practice question

["Matt Williamson" <suppressed>]

Hi

When using a MySQL database with modperl 2. I can find lots of docs on
using DBI, but not much on what is the best practice...

I am currently connecting, using the db and exiting on each request, and
relying on Apache::DBI to cache the connection. E.g.

use Apache::DBI;

sub handler {
   
   # get db handle
   my $dbh = DBI->connect(DB_URL, DB_USER, DB_PASSWD ....

  #make some queries
  my $lastKey = $dbh->prepare("SELECT LAST_INSERT_ID()");

  #query
  $lastKey->execute;
 ($key) = $lastKey->fetchrow_array();

  # 
}

If I understand Apache::DBI correctly, the DBI->connect picks up a
cached connection. Is it possible to prepare queries in one place and
reuse in all the child nodes? E.g. using prepare_cached. If so where do
I put that? In the startup file? In the same module?

Thanks in advance

Matt