PHP Wrapper Class for a Read-only database

This is a pretty special case of a database wrapper class where I wanted to discard any updates to the database, but want SELECT queries to run against an alternative read-only database. In this instance, I have a planned outage of a primary database server, but would like the public-facing websites and web services to remain as accessible as possible.

I wrote this quick database wrapper class that will pass all SELECT queries on to a local replica of the database, and silently discard any updates. On this site almost all of the functionality still works, but it obviously isn’t saving and new information while the primary database is unavailable.

Here is my class. This is intended as a wrapper to an ADOdb class, but it is generic enough that I think it would work for many other database abstraction functions as well as seamless data pump.

class db_unavailable {
    var $readonly_db;

    function __construct($readonly_db)
    {
        $this->query_db = $readonly_db;
    }

    function query($sql)
    {
        $args = func_get_args();
        if (preg_match("#(INSERT INTO|REPLACE INTO|UPDATE|DELETE)#i", $args[0])) {
            // echo "Unable to do insert/replace/update/delete query: $sql\n";
            return true;
        } else {
            return call_user_func_array(array($this->readonly_db, 'query'), $args);
        }
    }

    function __call($function, $args)
    {
        return call_user_func_array(array($this->readonly_db, $function), $args);
    }
}

I simply create my $query_db object that points to the read-only database. Then create my main $db object as a new db_unavailable() object. Any select queries against $db will behave as they normally do, and data-modifying queries will be silently discarded.