Hi Gregg.
Right now, when information is needed from the database I open a connection, retreive/send my data, then close the connection
I'd say it is "ok" if you only have 15 people using the system, but it is not a very good idea to do this. Opening connections requires system resources.
instead, you can use a broker (have you heard about connection pooling?). If you are not using one yet, you simply create this broker with say, 20 connections, and you just get the connection whenever you need to do some database stuff and free the connection when you are done. This is a much, much better approach.
www.javaexchange.com has a class that implements connection pooling, very easy to use and free. You might want to give it a try.
hope it helps..