Vinz, Datawarehouse time! Slightly off topic, but;

Example: You could now use one new user for online requests (SELECT) only.
If you limit this user, the database will always be able to store new data.

Two databases, preferably on different servers, one – the OLTP system (datawarehousing speak: on-line transactional processing) database is where the monitors send their data. Not normally queried.

Second database is an OLAP (on-line analytical processing) db. Is used for reads/queries. Can be kept near-real time with the OLTP db through clever data shuffling ETL processes.

Disadvantage is you double your data, bonus is warehouse can be denormalised for speed, can be a history too – if need be, can truncate OLTP tables and still have all data from all time in OLAP warehouse. Also solves problem of read/write contention or query deadlock.

Sounds like overkill in a project so ‘small’ but it’s growing very quickly and soon we’ll have to consider technologies like this, I think.