From what I understand, MySQL 5.1 supports server-side prepared statements. Therefore the following code should prepare the statement once, and execute it 10 times:
    Connection conn = ds.getConnection();
    PreparedStatement stmt = conn.prepareStatement("SELECT COUNT(*) FROM users WHERE user_id=?");
    for (int i=0; i<10; i++)
    {
        stmt.setString(1, "FOO"+i);
        ResultSet res = stmt.executeQuery();
        res.close();
    }
    stmt.close();
    conn.close();
What I see instead in the mysqld log is the query being executed directly:
    SELECT @@session.tx_isolation
    SELECT USER()
    SELECT COUNT(*) FROM users WHERE user_id='FOO0'
    SELECT COUNT(*) FROM users WHERE user_id='FOO1'
    SELECT COUNT(*) FROM users WHERE user_id='FOO2'
            ...
I see the query sent in the full each time in the protocol logs too (using tcpdump).
Using Connector/J 5.1.12 and MySQL 5.1.44. No funny JDBC options in the JDBC URL. Going straight to the driver for this test, no pool.
Why aren't the statements being prepared?