PostgreSQL checks the schema CREATE privilege before the IF NOT EXISTS
existence test, so an account with only table-level INSERT was denied on
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS even though the table was right there and
writable. The denial set _failed and the whole recorder went no-op for
the process lifetime, silently: 150+ calls downstream lost their latency,
token and cost rows with nothing but one warning to show for it.
The probe is the direct fix. The larger fix is the criterion: structural
degradation now means "provably cannot write" (pool creation failed, or
the table is absent and cannot be created), not "something threw during
init" -- a probe or acquire failure just skips the row and retries on the
next call.
SQLite stays as it is on purpose. Measured: it short-circuits the
statement at parse time, so it passes even under another connection's
EXCLUSIVE lock or on a read-only file. A probe there would buy nothing;
the docstring now says so to keep symmetry-minded future edits away.
iomgaa
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