Hi,

don't know if this thread is still in progress but I have found something interesting in my case.

I have and old project using hibernate 3.2 and I update it to the last version (hibernate 4.1.4)

In this project no webflow, just jsp/mvc.

Spring 3.1.1
Hibernate 4.1.4
c3p0 0.9.1.2

I have the same issue : connections do not return to the pool.

I notice that I've change my pom.xml from :

<dependency>
<groupId>c3p0</groupId>
<artifactId>c3p0</artifactId>
<version>0.9.1.2</version>
</dependency>

To :

<dependency>
<groupId>org.hibernate</groupId>
<artifactId>hibernate-c3p0</artifactId>
<version>${org.hibernate.version}</version>
<type>jar</type>
<scope>compile</scope>
</dependency>

When I use the standard c3p0 jar no problem. But when I use hibernate-c3p0 the problem appear.

I think it might depend of how the pool is declared : persistence.xml or bean style.

Hope it helps