Issues with (64bit?) Windows MySQL driver

[Ben Rubinstein]

I have a tool (a LiveCode standalone) running on Windows, which every night 
drops and recreates a database on a remote MySQL server, (about 350MB, 50 
tables). Running for many years.

About a year ago, we started to see a problem where sometimes the nightly 
build would fail, part-way through the process. The routine involves creating 
and populating tables, then creating indexes. Depending when the problem hits, 
the initial error is either

	Connection was killed
or
	Lost connection to MySQL server during query

All subsequent calls to revdb_execute get the error

	MySQL server has gone away

I tried splitting the build into sections, so that the code opens the 
connection to a database builds some of the tables, then closes the 
connection, and opens a new connection to add more tables. There was no 
evidence that this made the issue occur less frequently; and once it hit, 
subsequent attempts to open a connection would get the error

	Can't connect to MySQL server on '<address>' (0)


When this was happening maybe a couple of times per month (on average) it 
didn't matter too much (the system is designed to be resilient, if the data 
wasn't refreshed one day, it would be the next). I thought it might be network 
glitches.

Recently IT tightened security on the machine where the tool runs; and since 
then we get this problem nine times of out ten. They say the only change made 
was to remove the admin privileges of the user account, and have now reversed 
that change; however, this problem has remained since. Another problem that 
arrived at the same time, reported here as "a windows weirdness", seems (per 
Paul Dupuis and Mark Waddingham) to be related to UNC paths, and possibly to 
security policies.

Does anyone have a suggestion for how conditions could affect this? Is there 
any way to get more detailed information out of the rev database driver about 
what's happening?

TIA,

Ben