I have finally, after a good twenty months of profitable employment, done a very stupid thing to the database…
One of the first things you soon realise working in the IT industry, is that when used properly, computers and the net are remarkably effective efficiency tools, allowing the user to fit much more work into their already packed day at the office. Can you imagine what it was like before the information revolution? You’d have to write a letter to a client on a typewriter! Then stick in in an envelope and post it! And then wait at least 24 hours for them to get it! Insane no?
The downside of these wonderfully efficient tools is that if you’re not paying attention they make it incrediably easy to not only shoot yourself in the foot, but blow off your entire leg. As I did on Friday afternoon when I got confused between single and double quotes in a database statement and erased one of the fields in about, oh, I don’t know 15,000 of our products!
Happily that particular field is only used on about 30 of our sites, and a tape backup was done last Tuesday, but it’s still pretty damn embarrasing. And it will probably have a rather disruptive effect on my plans to take some leave in about two months time. Hmmmm.
