When Does ConnectionManagerBase.Validate() Get Executed?

[Microsoft follow-up]

Hi,
I'm pondering building a custom connection manager and within the Validate() method I want to initiate a connection to a SQL Server instance, check something out, and then close he connection at the end of the method. Here's the code I have so far:




Code Snippet
public override Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Runtime.DTSExecResult Validate(Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Runtime.IDTSInfoEvents infoEvents)
{
DTSExecResult execRes = DTSExecResult.Success;
if (String.IsNullOrEmpty(_serverName))
{
infoEvents.FireError(0, "SqlConnectionManager", "No server name specified", String.Empty, 0);
execRes = DTSExecResult.Failure;
}
else
{

//Establish a connection and check that it is pointing to an MDM DB
SqlConnection sqlConnToValidate = new SqlConnection();
sqlConnToValidate.ConnectionString = this._connectionString;
try
{
sqlConnToValidate.Open();
if (!IsMDMDatabase(sqlConnToValidate))
{
execRes = DTSExecResult.Failure;
}
}
catch (Exception e)
{
infoEvents.FireError(0, "MDMConnectionManager", e.Message, String.Empty, 0);
execRes = DTSExecResult.Failure;
}
finally
{
if (sqlConnToValidate.State != ConnectionState.Closed)
sqlConnToValidate.Close();
}
}
return execRes;
}






I'm worried about the overhead of establishing a connection every time Validate() is called. So the questions are


When does Validate() get called?

Does it get called for every component/task that uses it?

Does anyone suspect that what I'm doing here is necassarily a bad thing or not?

Thanks
Jamie