Better user feedback for database errors

Our Jira setup uses a separate Database Server (MySQL), over the past few weeks we have had several failures. In one the whole database became unavailable, and on two more occasions the database went read only (disk full, commits not possible).

While we obviously need to sort out the issues with the database uptime (and contractually it should be 100%, so we have a issue with the provider) we were also disappointed with Jira's behaviour during the outages. [please note: from my perspective as an admin, the logs etc.. were fine, messages were geeky but could be interpreted, and no corruption of the database has occurred].

Our end users, however, were confronted with error pages simply framed the Java exception (in all it's 'glory') no real attempt was made to clarify the situation to the user, just a very complex error message and a note to call the administrators.

In particular, when the dB was read-only, there was no problem viewing issues (which is good) but submitting issues only failed when the user had already entered all their data. Causing much irritation for some who had spent time entering detailed descriptions. Our only choices were to take Jira down altogether, or add a big red announcement banner (tm).

We appreciate that there is no easy technical fix for this, and that there will always be race conditions (Db goes down while user is editing etc..) that are hard to handle, but in situations where Jira relies on an potentially fallible external resource there is an opportunity to provide much more user-friendly error notification.