We have a system connecting to EMC Centera via the Java XAM API. Currently we create a new XSystem instance when needed, read/write as necessary and then close the instance. We potentially can have many concurrent read/write operations on multiple threads, so each thread has its own XSystem instance.

However, creating an XSystem instance is a relatively expensive operation, and is having an adverse effect on performance. My question is: do I only need to create a single (static) XSystem instance that can then be used across all threads? Is there any problem with keeping a connection open for an indefinite period? Is it possible for the connection to time out? If so, how can I detect this?

Many thanks in advance for your help.