A method and software for processing a database statement submitted by a client application to a database system is described. A database statement is precompiled based on a string received from the client application and cached in response to a call from the client application to close the precompiled database statement. The caching may be implicit or explicit or a combination of both. With implicit caching, the precompiled statement is saved in a cache in association with the string used to precompile the database statement; with explicit caching, the precompiled statement is saved in a cache in association with a user specified key.