I would like to know from my application if a myisam table can accept writes (i.e. not locked). If an exception is thrown, everything is fine as I can catch this and log the failed statement to a file. However, if a 'flush tables with read lock' command has been issued (possibly for backup), the query I send will pretty much hang out forever. If one table is locked at a time, insert delayed works well. But when this global lock is applied, my query just waits. The query I run is an insert statement. If this statement fails or hangs, user experience is degraded. I need a way to send the query to the server and forget about it (pretty much). Does anyone have any suggestions on how to deal with this? -set a query timeout? -run asyncronous request and allow for the lock to expire while application continues? -fork my php process? Please let me know if I can provide and clarification or details.