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Error messages in case of failure to connect to a database are not very informative. For example: 1. Use the Derby driver 2. Create a connection to URL jdbc:derby:localhost/xyz using this driver 3. Connect 4. The error message is "Unable to add connection, null". It looks like there was an exception - the stack trace of this exception should be displayed to the user and logged to the IDE log file.
Another idea would be to just improve the message. I think there are two kinds of exceptions: expected and unexpected. Expected exceptions should be wrapped into some user-friendly message ("Unable to add connection. The error returned by the database was: ..."). Is is unexpected exceptions (or those that should usually not occur) that should be logged to the message log and displayed to the user using ErrorMessage.notify(). The exception reported in this issue is an expected one (connecting to a database can fail for any reason). We should of course display something more meaningful instead of "null".
Fixed by the fix for issue 63957.
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