An uncaught Exception was encountered

Your solution there is telling me that it is not finding the MySQL files. Which maybe a configuration setup problem.
But wait and see if one of the development teams comments back to you.

I agree. If I understood the logic being used in the PHP code, I could suggest a solution to the problem. All I did was track back the error to a point where there had to be an issue. I seen the socket setting was blank for the mysqli connect function and dropped in the socket info. The thing I don't get is why isn't the setting in the database configuration? I see socket logic in the code but where is it being set at?