Am I Using JDBC Connection Pooling?

I am trying to determine if I am actually using JDBC connection pooling. After doing some research, the implementation almost seems too easy. Easier than a regular connection in fact so i'd like to verify.

Here is my connection class:

public class DatabaseConnection {

Connection conn = null;

public Connection getConnection() {

    BasicDataSource bds = new BasicDataSource();
    bds.setDriverClassName("com.mysql.jdbc.Driver");
    bds.setUrl("jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/data");
    bds.setUsername("USERNAME");
    bds.setPassword("PASSWORD");

    try{
        System.out.println("Attempting Database Connection");
        conn = bds.getConnection();
        System.out.println("Connected Successfully");
    }catch(SQLException e){
        System.out.println("Caught SQL Exception: " + e);
    }
    return conn;
}

public void closeConnection() throws SQLException {
    conn.close();
}

}

Is this true connection pooling? I am using the connection in another class as so:

        //Check data against database.
    DatabaseConnection dbConn = new DatabaseConnection();
    Connection conn;
    ResultSet rs;
    PreparedStatement prepStmt;

    //Query database and check username/pass against table.
    try{
        conn = dbConn.getConnection();
        String sql = "SELECT * FROM users WHERE username=? AND password=?";
        prepStmt = conn.prepareStatement(sql);
        prepStmt.setString(1, user.getUsername());
        prepStmt.setString(2, user.getPassword());
        rs = prepStmt.executeQuery();

        if(rs.next()){ //Found Match.
            do{
                out.println("UserName = " + rs.getObject("username") + " Password = " + rs.getObject("password"));
                out.println("<br>");
            } while(rs.next());
        } else {
            out.println("Sorry, you are not in my database."); //No Match.
        }

        dbConn.closeConnection(); //Close db connection.

    }catch(SQLException e){
        System.out.println("Caught SQL Exception: " + e);
    }

Assuming that it's the BasicDataSource is from DBCP, then yes, you are using a connection pool. However, you're recreating another connection pool on every connection acquirement. You are not really pooling connections from the same pool. You need to create the connection pool only once on application's startup and get every connection from it. You should also not hold the connection as an instance variable. You should also close the connection, statement and resultset to ensure that the resources are properly closed, also in case of exceptions. Java 7's try-with-resources statement is helpful in this, it will auto-close the resources when the try block is finished.

Here's a minor rewrite:

public final class Database {

    private static final BasicDataSource dataSource = new BasicDataSource();

    static {
        dataSource.setDriverClassName("com.mysql.jdbc.Driver");
        dataSource.setUrl("jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/data");
        dataSource.setUsername("USERNAME");
        dataSource.setPassword("PASSWORD");
    }

    private Database() {
        //
    }

    public static Connection getConnection() throws SQLException {
        return dataSource.getConnection();
    }

}

(this can if necessary be refactored as an abstract factory to improve pluggability)

and

private static final String SQL_EXIST = "SELECT * FROM users WHERE username=? AND password=?";

public boolean exist(User user) throws SQLException {
    boolean exist = false;

    try (
        Connection connection = Database.getConnection();
        PreparedStatement statement = connection.prepareStatement(SQL_EXIST);
    ) {
        statement.setString(1, user.getUsername());
        statement.setString(2, user.getPassword());

        try (ResultSet resultSet = preparedStatement.executeQuery()) {
            exist = resultSet.next();
        }
    }       

    return exist;
}

which is to be used as follows:

try {
    if (!userDAO.exist(username, password)) {
        request.setAttribute("message", "Unknown login. Try again.");
        request.getRequestDispatcher("/WEB-INF/login.jsp").forward(request, response);
    } else {
        request.getSession().setAttribute("user", username);
        response.sendRedirect("userhome");
    }
} catch (SQLException e) {
    throw new ServletException("DB error", e);
}

In a real Java EE environement you should however delegate the creation of the DataSource to the container / application server and obtain it from JNDI. In case of Tomcat, see also for example this document: http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-6.0-doc/jndi-resources-howto.html