Detecting database issues by script?

I just got an idea, or rather a question in my head...

Is there a good way to quickly detect database issues, so that we can hold payouts in scripts until the database is responding again?

A feature like that would take away lots of complaining about items not paying out what they should, whether it is camping chairs, games, sploders or any other script that pays out money...

Any good ideas on how to solve it? And quickly without much lag?

Would a llGetOwner() return a NULL_KEY when the database is dead, for instance? Or maybe a llKey2Name() would return a blank string? It would obviously have to be a function that uses the asset system, not the local sim.

With something like this, we can make the script notify the payee and try again in a minute or something.

I would think that the most viable function for testing something like that would be anything that returns data through the data_server event. I'm not sure if I've ever experienced a failed dataserver request though, just some slow ones.