For a web application with connection polling enabled, is it better to work with a locally scoped connection object or instance scoped connection object. I know there is probably not a big performance improvement between the two (because of the pooling) but would you say that one follows a better pattern than the other. Thanks ;)

public class MyServlet extends HttpServlet {
    DataSource ds;

    public void init() throws ServletException {
        ds = (DataSource) getServletContext().getAttribute("DBCPool");
    }

    protected void doGet(HttpServletRequest arg0, HttpServletResponse arg1) throws ServletException, IOException {
        SomeWork("SELECT * FROM A");
        SomeWork("SELECT * FROM B");
    }

    void SomeWork(String sql) {
        Connection conn = null;
        try {
            conn = ds.getConnection();
            // execute some sql
            .....
        } finally {
            if(conn != null) {
                conn.close(); // return to pool
            }
        }
    }
}

Or

public class MyServlet extends HttpServlet {
    DataSource ds;
    Connection conn;*

    public void init() throws ServletException {
        ds = (DataSource) getServletContext().getAttribute("DBCPool");
    }

    protected void doGet(HttpServletRequest arg0, HttpServletResponse arg1) throws ServletException, IOException {
        try {
            conn = ds.getConnection();
            SomeWork("SELECT * FROM A");
            SomeWork("SELECT * FROM B");
        } finally {
            if(conn != null) {
                conn.close(); // return to pool
            }
        }
    }

    void SomeWork(String sql) {
        // execute some sql
        .....
    }
}