"MySQL has generally got your back in the 'less safety for more performance' arena:"
So, this was never entirely clear to me, but now that I've read a bit more about it, this might actually be exactly what I want (which is to not have the system wait to return when posting new content, and just assume it'll end up on disk eventually). The talk of not being ACID made me nervous and maybe switched off my brain. I guess it just means I don't need or want ACID in this case, all I want is a consistent database on reboot.
So, I guess maybe this does what I want, but just to be clear: In the event of data loss, the database will still be consistent, correct? i.e. we'll lose one or more comments or written pieces of data, but the transaction it was wrapped up in won't be half finished or something in the database? (I recall MySQL had issues with this kind of thing in the very distant past, but I imagine that's just bad memories at this point.)
You're in good shape if you use innodb in MySQL. The issues in the distant past you're thinking of are with the isam drivers, and I've also had issues with the compressed write only archive driver when writing to that continuously. Innodb will remain consistent.
So, this was never entirely clear to me, but now that I've read a bit more about it, this might actually be exactly what I want (which is to not have the system wait to return when posting new content, and just assume it'll end up on disk eventually). The talk of not being ACID made me nervous and maybe switched off my brain. I guess it just means I don't need or want ACID in this case, all I want is a consistent database on reboot.
So, I guess maybe this does what I want, but just to be clear: In the event of data loss, the database will still be consistent, correct? i.e. we'll lose one or more comments or written pieces of data, but the transaction it was wrapped up in won't be half finished or something in the database? (I recall MySQL had issues with this kind of thing in the very distant past, but I imagine that's just bad memories at this point.)