Question

What is a better way than try/catch wrapping to verify that the connection on a TableAdapter opened or will open successfully?

public class MyItemParser
{
     private myTableAdapter fa;

     public FacultyParser()
     {
         this.fa = new facultyTableAdapter();
     }

     public bool HasValidConnection()
     {
        try
        {
             this.fa.Connection.Open();
        }
        catch(exception e)
        {
            return false;
        }     
        return true;
     }

     public void FillList(IList<myItem> list)
     {
         foreach (var row in this.fa.GetData())
             /**** DoSomething  ****/
     }
}

Answer 1

You should use the try and catch (I usually put the connection handling on a different class)
You might check (if you keep the connection open ) for the connection state but it doesn’t mean anything if the state is open (not reliable enough). In one project I even issued a dummy SQL request to test the connection before I handle it to the actuall class that uses it.