Raymond,

> Since it is also the same at run-time, I will have to create a work-around for this poor
> behaviour --- unless the author would like to correct it.

I doubt he would, since it is both expected and accepted behaviour.
If there was the even remote possibility for Connected to be False after
an assignment such as "Connected := True", without any exception raised,
then an implicit postcondition would bee violated, and we would be
talking about a joke. Fortunately, we are talking about a serious
development environment such as Delphi here.
I can see your point as an application user, but it doesn't make sense
as a developer, since application users don't use the Object Inspector
nor write code to set properties.

> I doubt it would adhere to ISO standard 9241-11.

So wouldn't my cell phone, FWIW. :-)

It's not the programming tools that adhere to that standard, but the
applications you develop with those tools. If you consider this
(absolutely clean) behaviour poor or think it should be fixed someway,
then I believe you're gonna have a hard time developing applications
with Delphi. Do you plan to write something like

MyConnection.Connected := True;
// do something with the connection

or

try
MyConnection.Connected := True;
// do something with the connection
except
// tell the user something went wrong, or ignore the exception,
// or do whatever you wish
end;

?
Ciao
--
____
_/\/ando