Need to revisit strings in Java and MATLAB

The following ndsm tests are failing for me on MATLAB 2015b on Debian 9.

    299 - _matlab_mockup_ (Failed)
    339 - _matlab_nds2_ticket-289_nds2-1_6_ (Failed)
    340 - _matlab_nds2_ticket-289_nds2-1_5_ (Failed)

From the digging I have done it looks to be a java/MATLAB string incompatibility. We want the java to return java.lang.String, but MATLAB does not handle the java.lang.String, basic functions like isstring segfaults when it is given a java.lang.String.

We need to be careful how we address this. We have a large number of scripts in the control rooms that use the java MATLAB interface, and an unknown quantity that use the ndsm interface. We cannot break the control rooms, we don't have the ability to fix it all...