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Hm. "rows actually not being written to the db during normal circumstances". A database that acts like /dev/null ? Like BLACKHOLE MySQL storage engine? I can not imagine a real use case, where it will be needed. If you allow a database to lose "some" rows it may well lose all of them. What is the purpose of a database that does not store your data?

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I'm not the one who said "If you're streaming weather data into a SQL database, it could be ok to drop inserts here and there to gain throughput for the data analysis operations. SQL has no abilities to express such a thing (except in db-specific hacks)."

I can understand wanting an unlogged table for the speedup (missing the last sec of weather data won't cause huge problems and I'm more forgiving of missing data when a whole machine fails), but just to be able to randomly drop things seems scary.

Also, I thought you were joking, but you're not http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/blackhole-storage-eng... bu

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