Today, and it has been this way for a decade or more, applicaitons typically connect, run a query, disconnect and rely on the connection pooling the API that a reconnection will be quick. That is, the API lingers to the connection for about 60 seconds, and if there is no reconnection in this period, the API physically disconnects from SQL Server.

However, occasionally you run into application that opens a connection and keeps it open during the lifetime of the application. I may have written one or two myself. It seems that this application's connection back to the metadata database is of this old school. Right or wrong? Since I don't know anything about this application nor about the design decision I am not to judge. I know that in the system I work with, we have components that stay connected.