Hey everybody First topic: I just faced the problem of validating a given connection string to a PlcField (in general) for syntactical correctness. For S7Field we implemented some static functionality (“matches(String)”) to check if the given string matches the PATTERNs , but i think we should implement something similar for all other implemented Devices/FieldTypes; as Java does not offer to override a static method defined in interface in an implemented class we should think about another solution. I had a chat with Julian on slack and he suggested to acquire at first a Driver from DriverManager whereas the given driver (or connection) offers a method where the validation of a connection string to a field (“validateQuery(String)“) could be performed. Furthermore also DriverManager could offer a method to validate a field-connection-string and returning for what kind of Driver that string could be used. I would highly appreciate to have a connection-string-validation as soon as possible; I also can start implementing that (@Chris,@Julian I promise to finish that in an appropriate amount of time, not like with my scraper-branch --> Sorry for that).
Second topic: Close related is another topic I had some issues with: when fetching a Connection via getConnection() from a DriverManager we currently perform an implicit connect() to that connection. I think we should offer the user the possibility to connect to the connection on his request. What do u think about these two topics? Best Tim
