getting db connection through singleton class

In .NET C# you can wrtie your singleton like this

    public class Singleton{
public static readonly Singleton Instance= new Singleton();
private Singleton(){}

or for multi threaded environment:

using System;

public sealed class Singleton
{
   private static volatile Singleton instance;
   private static object syncRoot = new Object();

   private Singleton() {}

   public static Singleton Instance
   {
      get 
      {
         if (instance == null) 
         {
            lock (syncRoot) 
            {
               if (instance == null) 
                  instance = new Singleton();
            }
         }

         return instance;
      }
   }
}

Singleton means that the class that you have made can be instantiated only once. So if you want that to happen, do two things:

1. Make the constructor private.(This is to prevent other classes from accessing it.)

2. instantiate the class as:

   get
   {
    if(instance == null) //important coz, the class will be instantiated only on the first call
    {
      instance = new singletonDb;
    }
    return instance;
   }
   

The connection itself is not satisfying the Singleton criteria because you can create multiple instances of a database connection object. A singleton by definition can only be instantiated once.

You can make the SqlConnection a part of the Singleton, by changing your example to this:

public sealed class SingletonDB
{
    private static readonly SingletonDB instance = new SingletonDB();
    private readonly SqlConnection con = new SqlConnection(ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["mydb"].ConnectionString);

    // Explicit static constructor to tell C# compiler
    // not to mark type as beforefieldinit
    static SingletonDB()
    {
    }

    private SingletonDB()
    {
    }

    public static SingletonDB Instance
    {
        get
        {
            return instance;
        }
    }

    public SqlConnection GetDBConnection()
    {
        return con;
    }
}

This way the SqlConnection used by your SingletonDB class would have one and only one SqlConnection, thus follow the Singleton pattern.

Your Singleton is still off.

As far as the singleton pattern goes, please see Jon Skeet's very good and detailed description here : http://www.yoda.arachsys.com/csharp/singleton.html

Using a Singleton for a SqlConnection object is a really, really bad idea. There is no reason to do this whatsoever.

If you are attempting to avoid a performance hit of "new SqlConnection()" or "connection.Open()" be advised that there really is no performance hit there because of the connection pooling going on behind the scenes. Connection Pooling handles the opening/closing of the expensive connections. Not the SqlConnection object.

You won't be able to open multiple SqlDataReaders/Commands with the connection at the same time and will run into thread blocking issues if you are trying to share the same connection object with multiple threads.

The Singleton pattern is the most over used and abused pattern and there are many side effects of the singleton that you may not be aware of. Very good talk about the dangers of singletons here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FRm3VPhseI