initial
Size (capital 'S').
another thought is to only set maxActive and leave initialSize at zero (the default). That way, it only creates the connections when needed.
Something else... does 'SELECT * FROM DUAL' actually return a row? DUAL is a per-query virtual table, right? So on any given query, it contains nothing? You'd need 'SELECT 1 FROM DUAL', wouldn't you? But then again, I'm not an Oracle DBA.

[ September 09, 2004: Message edited by: Mike Curwen ]