What are the drawbacks of using persistent connections (pconnect) in PHP?

Persistent connections can lead to resource exhaustion on the server if not managed properly. It is essential to limit the number of persistent connections to prevent overwhelming the server and causing performance issues. One way to address this is by implementing connection pooling, which helps manage the number of active connections and reuses them efficiently.

// Example of implementing connection pooling with PDO in PHP
$pdo = new PDO('mysql:host=localhost;dbname=mydatabase', 'username', 'password', array(
    PDO::ATTR_PERSISTENT => true,
    PDO::ATTR_EMULATE_PREPARES => false,
    PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE => PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION
));