alistairphillips.com

I’m : a web and mobile developer based in the Manning Valley, Australia.


Always read your SQL statements

Almost had a heart attack today ... Came in from lunch only to find that someone was waiting on the phone for me to unlock some of their E2 work items. So I took the call, fired up SQL Plus issued:

SELECT locked from PHOENIXWORKFLOW WHERE workitemid ='xxxxx';

and it told me that a user had it locked. So to unlock it I typed:

UPDATE phoenixworkflow SET locked = -1;

--> 34692 rows update;

Aaaaagghhhh I had just unlocked *EVERY single work item in the system. Damn Damn Damn. So I rushed to dial the E2 boffins and sent off a screenshot of what I had done.

I was expecting this this to cause havoc and result in the Service Desk receiving tons of calls about the E2 system dying but not so. Turns out that I could have just typed ROLLBACK and it would have undone what I did. But I closed SQL Plus and it committed all the changes.

Damn I still feel so sick ...