How to preinitialize DBCP connection pool on startup?

Question

The setup of my project is -

1. Spring JDBC for persistence
2. Apache DBCP 1.4 for connection pooling
3. Mysql 5 on Linux

Here is the log of my application that captures the interactions with the database.

2013-01-29 15:52:21,549 DEBUG http-bio-8080-exec-3 org.springframework.jdbc.core.JdbcTemplate - Executing SQL query [SELECT id from emp]
2013-01-29 15:52:21,558 DEBUG http-bio-8080-exec-3 org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DataSourceUtils - Fetching JDBC Connection from DataSource
2013-01-29 15:52:31,878  INFO http-bio-8080-exec-3 jdbc.connection - 1. Connection opened  org.apache.commons.dbcp.DriverConnectionFactory.createConnection(DriverConnectionFactory.java:38)
2013-01-29 15:52:31,878 DEBUG http-bio-8080-exec-3 jdbc.connection - open connections:  1 (1)
2013-01-29 15:52:31,895  INFO http-bio-8080-exec-3 jdbc.connection - 1. Connection closed  org.apache.commons.dbcp.DelegatingConnection.close(DelegatingConnection.java:247)
2013-01-29 15:52:31,895 DEBUG http-bio-8080-exec-3 jdbc.connection - open connections:  none
2013-01-29 15:52:41,950  INFO http-bio-8080-exec-3 jdbc.connection - 2. Connection opened  org.apache.commons.dbcp.DriverConnectionFactory.createConnection(DriverConnectionFactory.java:38)
2013-01-29 15:52:41,950 DEBUG http-bio-8080-exec-3 jdbc.connection - open connections:  2 (1)
2013-01-29 15:52:52,001  INFO http-bio-8080-exec-3 jdbc.connection - 3. Connection opened  org.apache.commons.dbcp.DriverConnectionFactory.createConnection(DriverConnectionFactory.java:38)
2013-01-29 15:52:52,002 DEBUG http-bio-8080-exec-3 jdbc.connection - open connections:  2 3 (2)
2013-01-29 15:53:02,058  INFO http-bio-8080-exec-3 jdbc.connection - 4. Connection opened  org.apache.commons.dbcp.DriverConnectionFactory.createConnection(DriverConnectionFactory.java:38)
2013-01-29 15:53:02,058 DEBUG http-bio-8080-exec-3 jdbc.connection - open connections:  2 3 4 (3)
2013-01-29 15:53:03,403 DEBUG http-bio-8080-exec-3 org.springframework.jdbc.core.BeanPropertyRowMapper - Mapping column 'id' to property 'id' of type int
2013-01-29 15:53:04,494 DEBUG http-bio-8080-exec-3 org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DataSourceUtils - Returning JDBC Connection to DataSource

Two things are clear from the log -

1. The connection pool only starts creating connections when the first request to execute a query is received.
2. A pool of 4 connections takes nearly 30 seconds to initialize.

My questions are -

1. How should one configure DBCP to initialize on startup automatically?
2. Should it really take that long to create connections?

Note: Please don't suggest switching to C3P0 or Tomcat connection pool. I'm aware of those solutions. I'm more interested in understanding the problem at hand than just a quick fix. Besides I'm sure something so basic should be possible with DBCP as well.

Contents of dbcontext -

<bean id="dataSource" class="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSource" destroy-method="close">
    <property name="driverClassName" value="${db.driver}" />
    <property name="url" value="${db.jdbc.url}" />
    <property name="username" value="${db.user}" />
    <property name="password" value="${db.password}" />
    <property name="maxActive" value="20" />
    <property name="initialSize" value="4" />
    <property name="testOnBorrow" value="true" />
    <property name="validationQuery" value="SELECT 1" />
</bean>

Answer 1

The initialSize doesn't take effect until you first request a connection. From the java docs to BasicDataSource#setInitialSize

Sets the initial size of the connection pool.

Note: this method currently has no effect once the pool has been initialized. The pool is initialized the first time one of the following methods is invoked: getConnection, setLogwriter, setLoginTimeout, getLoginTimeout, getLogWriter.

Try adding init-method="getLoginTimeout" to your bean to confirm this.