Best practice for database connection

[Jason Friedman]

I'm trying to reconcile two best practices which seem to conflict.

1) Use a _with_ clause when connecting to a database so the connection is
closed in case of premature exit.

class_name = 'oracle.jdbc.OracleDriver'
url = f"jdbc:oracle:thin:@//{host_name}:{port_number}/{database_name}"
with jdbc.connect(class_name, url, [user_name, password],
jdbc_jar_file.as_posix()) as connection:
    logger.info(f"Connected.")

2) Use self-made functions to streamline code. For example, there are
several places I need to know if the database object is a particular type,
so I create a function like this:

foobar_set = set()
...
def is_foobar(connection: jdbc.Connection, name: str) -> bool:
    """
    :param connection: connection object
    :param name: owner.object
    :return: True if this object is of type foobar
    """
    global foobar_set
    if not foobar_set:
        query = f"""select stuff from stuff"""
        cursor = connection.cursor()
        cursor.execute(query)
        for owner, object_name in cursor.fetchall():
            foobar_set.add(f"{owner}.{object_name}")
        cursor.close()
    return name.upper() in foobar_set


But that requires that I call is_foobar() with a connection object.

Essentially I'd like a function that leverages the one connection I create
at the beginning using a with clause.