mysql persistent connection...

i'm trying to get a better understanding of how to implement persistent connections with mysql in either perl/php basically i'm trying to solve the issue of whether a web app has to essentially perform a new mysql_connect on every page that's going to be doing any database access. using mysql_connect apparently creates a resource id that gets destroyed when the web page is no longer being used... can the implementation of persistent connections resolve this issue, and how does the resourceID get passed from page to page.. i'm not able to get the Session vars to contain the resourceID... thanks... -bruce