Connection Pooling/JDBC Connections

Hi All,
You all graciously helped figure out how to use JNDI over a singleton class
(and for non-web applications use a singleton class) for connection pooling.
I now have a question about a way to implement both.

Ideally I would like to have one class that handles connecting to a
database, whether it be from a web application or a standalone application.
For now I just have a boolean to let me know how I want to make the
connection, e.g. JNDI or a singleton.

So, my question is, is there a better way? I thought of surrounding the JNDI
code in a try/catch, but that seemed kind of messy.

Just looking for any ideas, or letting me know I'm way off base.

Also, what is the general rule for the username and password for a
connection; store it encrypted in a configuration file, hard-code in the
source, etc.?

Thanks in advance,
James R. Perkins