[mabbo]

I think the above means (if I do get the point) that databases scale in terms of both requests per second and number of active connections.

Having 1000 connections doing 1 request per second isn't the same as having 1 connection doing 1000 requests per second.

But, and I could be wrong, the larger factor is the number of requests per second.

[brianwawok]

This entirely depends on the database you are using, and if you are using a connection proxy in front of your database.