pulling text from db to add to error message

Sure, but without templating that supports conditional output, you cannot have meaningful alerts in many cases.  Being able to analyze the results and provide an alert that applies to the specific problem (and associated client-specific instructions and related information) is valuable.  That said, yes -- adding a key/value DB would be very nice.  I think I asked for something like redis or equivalent awhile back, but I was thinking that would be more for storing non-metric information by logicmodules for extraction in alerts.  I saw a recent FR noting the same could be done with ops notes (if manipulating ops notes was made more accessible), which is intriguing.  How would the proposed K/V database differ from the existing property system?