Hi Chris,
In Shared/DC/ZRDB/DA.py, Line 399 of Zope 2.6.1 and line 419 in 2.7.0, there's this rather pointless lump of code:
try: DB__=dbc() except: raise DatabaseError, ( '%s is not connected to a database' % self.id)
...which only serves to mask the real cause of the problem when trying to obtain a connection.
I remeber I made a collector issue about that liens of code: http://www.zope.org/Collectors/Zope/927 Previously this has been a string valued exception. Actually I like it to be an exception of a certain type now, because I can now selectively catching this DatabaseError and distinguish it from other errors. No need for a evil bare except. The reason is that I would like to treat errors when accessing an external data base different from other errors; often the data obtained there is only "optional" to the page, so I don't want to show usered the error page in this case, only to fill up doem slot with "sorry, that certain piece of information is not availabe, because our sql data base sucks". I see Your point. However is there any chance that "dbc()" does raise something more specific? I am afraid it does not. If it does not, I would have to go back to an evil bare except ... Cheers, Clemens