songdogtech on "Too many MySQL connections and MySQL server has gone away"

but are you advocating for @Kate to not even consider an object cache or plugin?

Of course not. Read the OP:

Any ideas on how we can configure MySQL/the server to handle this better?

And her answer:

We have a SE that does server config. I'll talk to him about the my.cnf and httpd.conf settings.

I'll assume for this that their SE knows a little about server admin and APC, etc.

And, you said:

@sondogtech's DELETE query will work, but it can lead to mistakes if you run manually.

Exactly how can it lead to "mistakes"?