nstcl does support "automagic multiple handles" at once.
The only reason OpenACS has multiple pools (all to the same database, traditionally being main, subquery, and log) is due to the restriction in AOLserver that you have to allocate as many handles as you want upfront. Once you have allocated handle(s) you have to release them all before you can get more from the same pool.
I didn't feel any need to impose this restriction with nstcl. Rather, you can define a "pool" to have multiple connections and freely use them all up. In OpenACS if you have the standard 3 pools you can't nest more four-levels of db_foreach statements.
In nstcl, for any given pool (default or otherwise) you can have as many db_foreach statements nested as you have defined connections. With nstcl there really is no need to define multiple pools for any reason other than to connect to multiple databases, be they two different Oracle databases (production & development perhaps) or two completely different types of databases (Oracle & Postgres).
In this sense, a single nstcl "pool" encompases the main, subquery, and log pools of AOLserver. As for -dbn syntax; if that's the route OpenACS takes I'll likely add support to nstcl for it. Lately I've found myself using nstcl more for work utterly unrelated to (Open)ACS (and I regret I haven't had time to track and participate in OpenACS development), but since I'll be converting a site from ACS 4.2 to OpenACS shortly, it'll be time to catch up on things.
