Java Database Connectivity (JDBC)

Hi

We are experiencing "broken pipe ORA-17002 error" when using connection pooling. This seems to be a common error when implementing connection pooling, but I didn't find any solution anywhere.

we are using Oracle 9i 9.2.0.1 JDBC thin driver
Our database is Oracle 8.1.7 running on HP Unix
The middle tier(Tomcat) runs on RedHat linux server
We are using JDK1.3

It seems the connections automatically get stale or bad after certain period of time.Iam checking to see if the connection is closed, before giving the connection from the pool to the appilcation.It seems its still open.But when I start using the connection to open a callable statement or setAutocommit to false, it says Broken pipe or No more data to read from the socket.

We are implementing our own connection pooling class(we experimented with OracleConnectionCacheImpl but it too gave the same errors).

Does anybody have a solution for this problem??
Is there a workaround for this?I would like to know how connection pooling is implemented in most of the applications that use oracle database?Or do we need to explicitly test the connection before using it, and reopen a connection if that is bad??

Thanks
Anil