I accidentally removed the WHERE clause from my SQL query in a personal tool. Every row is now the same. I overwrote 206,000+ rows. I have no backup, I am stupid.

drekly@lemmy.world to Programming@programming.dev – 356 points –

"UPDATE table_name SET w = $1, x = $2, z = $4 WHERE y = $3 RETURNING *",

does not do the same as

"UPDATE table_name SET w = $1, x = $2, y = $3, z = $4 RETURNING *",

It's 2 am and my mind blanked out the WHERE, and just wanted the numbers neatly in order of 1234.

idiot.

FML.

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Pro tip: transactions are your friend

Completely agree, transactions are amazing for this kind of thing. In a previous team we also had a policy of always pairing if you need to do any db surgery in prod so you have a second pair of eyes + rubber duck to explain what you're doing.