we are using pg 9.0.6 on linux centos 5.7 64bit. we are not using any go-between connection pools such as pgbouncer or pgpool - connections occur directly from client to database. the connection setup on the client (java) is default, only providing (user,password,dbhost,dbname).
we have about 10 developers developing java thru IDEA who start/stop the local tomcat server frequently. i have observed that tomcat doesn't disconnect from pg cleanly when they cycle, and the server processes persist for a long time. I have had them reduce their local connection factory pool size to 1 (this helped) and increased our max_connection value to 1000. yet the problem persists.
I have noticed that the server processes do die "after some time" - due to inactivity? we are looking for a way to control server processes better than we are doing now.