php/mysql web question

hi... if an app has a webpage that has to interface/display data from a mysql db, does the app have to essentially do a new db_connection for each time that a user accesses the page during the session. as far as i can tell, it does. in other words, the page would need to look something like: <? start the page do the db_connect do the db_query process the information from the db/tbl close the db_connection ?> the only reason i ask is that it would be nice/good if there was some way of opening a connetion once for a given session (save bandwidth) as well as somehow saving data from the db/tbl (short of using session vars) thanks -bruce bedouglas@earthlink.net