How would I test out if a database location, name, username, password are valid for a database? like making sure this is valid during a DB connect: "jdbc:mysql://"+DBLocation+"/"+DBName+"?user="+username+"&password="+password";
You might use DriverManager.getConnection(String url, String user, String password) and catch the possible SQLException if a database access error (like invalid password) occurs. I'm not sure if there is a cleaner way to check for invalid account information than to simply try to use the account information (and handle any problems).
I tested it out, and getConnection doesn't seem to return any errors with bad information. I just set up a boolean method to try to "show tables" and return false on any exceptions. Dirty, but it should work.
I just double checked that I do indeed get a connection failure (in the form of an SQLException) when I try to connect to a MySQL database with invalid user information. The error message reads: General error: Access denied for user: 'somebody@somewhere' to database 'someDatabase' I'm not sure why your experience would differ.