Best Practice for iSeries Data Access

Hello,
I'm researching best practice for iSeries EIS data access from a Model 2 
framework.  I believe it would behoove me to have a pool of connections to my 
iSeries DB ready for web traffic, rather than performing them for each request. 
I'm confused with all the literature referencing DTO & DAO I am finding when 
reviewing the RedBooks found via a connection factory search.  
At my front controller Action Servlet init(), I thought I would prepare a data 
base connection pool for latter use in the Servlets' doGet/doPost method.  I 
planned to insert my specific code in doGet/doPost to log stats about my form 
by HttpServletRequest.getParameter("session"), which I would be updating in 
subsequent pages.  I'm hoping I can retrieve the session and use it as a key in 
my iSeries tracking file, any tips appreciated.  The forwarding pages would be 
determined via ActionForward returned from my Action class.  Any URL's or 
recommending reading would be appreciated.  I'm currently finding stuff like 
JCA, resource adaptors.  Is this the location I should dig in with my research?
It's certainly a fun course of discovery learning Java and the different 
frameworks available.  In RPG, we rarely name our design patterns, it sure 
helps when communicating ideas to have a common syntax for these designs.  The 
more I play with the Java, the more I learn how much more I need to learn.  
This keeps it fresh and exciting.
Thanks to all for years of sharing of ideas and tips.  
David Kelly