So I had this odd thought as I was pondering grid outages and asset server woes and the like.  In the past I'd made a purchase and received the "stale" transaction error message.  Ok, fine, the database is getting bogged down or some other issue is up.  I've seen the blog posts telling us all that the asset server is experiencing difficulties and to refrain from purchases.  The Lindens still expect the world to read the blog.  I know I refresh it before I log in, and when I experience slowness, I take a peek.  But I don't expect that I'm the norm in this case.

Anyway, so I had this wacky thought.  How about a flag in the database.  Even on the asset server.  Yes, I know that poor thing is overwhelmed as it is.  But it could be moved to the individual sims, I suppose.  I'm picturing one like the Object build flag.  But something that only the Lindens can enable/disable.  It would be a transaction flag.  I say the asset server, since that's the first to become unresponsive.   But here's how I see it going:

1. Someone does a "Buy", "Pay", "drag from inventory to another person or to the ground", a quick DB lookup goes, "are transactions allowed?" or "select * from allowed_transactions where transactions_allowed = 'Y'"
2. If that select statement returns a row, continue merrily.
3. If that select statement returns nothing, STOP.  No money changes hands, no rezzing occurs, no assets are transferred, just STOP.

I'm sure I'm over-simplifying, but this is just the gist of the idea.  If the asset server bogs down, then SQL query may very well fail, in which case the default action is to do nothing.  If all is fine, then things continue.  No more lost money.  No more lost no-copy items.  No more ORANGE!  Um, well, that last one is just wishful thinking.  If it's too much of an additional load, put it onto the sims.  It seems a simple solution, and I like simple.