Establishing a reliable connection to the MySQL database was one of the more serious problems. The first time when the application was launched, it showed endless connection errors that resulted in the server being unresponsive at start up.

Solution: To address this, we verified that the MySQL service was indeed running and that it was reachable from the application. The connection credentials were also verified and the connection logic was improved to incorporate error detection and handling that would not lead to the server being shut down upon inability to connect.