Backups....et al
I once had a manager who looked alarmingly like a 1930's German leader, and sadly, acted like it too.

In my early days as a programmer, I was asked to write a system to hold the names/addresses etc... of a certain firm's gas and electricity customers. This I did. I was then asked to "sort out some kind of backup for it".

I asked for a small amount of money to buy a tape drive so that I could back up the database to a tape every night and drop it off at another of the companies' buildings on the way home from work.

The request was refused.

I asked if I could at least copy it to my local machine. Refused on the grounds that it contained 'customer information'.

Short of sitting there zipping the bloody files across several hundred floppy discs every evening, I was flummoxed.

Deciding that this 'really' needed backing up, I wrote a little .bat file (this was back in my Windows 3.1 days) to copy the database to a network drive - a drive that I knew was backed up on to tape.

The Network Admin got wind of it, and stopped it from happening as "a live database like that should be backed up properly". I agree, but with the options I had 'properly' was seemingly out the window.

My colleage came in one morning, and royaly f***ed up the database by running a sql statement to update something-or-other and ended up changing everyone's telephone number to the same number (no 'where' clause I'm guessing).

I was asked to retrieve a copy from our backup. Groan.

EDIT: At least I wasn't asked to create more line breaks.
(dchurch bah, Fri 11 Jun 2010, 16:51, 3 replies)

Brüning?
What have you against him?
(Evilweevil is covered in bees, Fri 11 Jun 2010, 19:37, closed)

Aargh!
Whenever I run any SQLs that amend or delete data I always run a query in Test, but I guess if you have no backup that is out of the question...!!
( Vambo, Fri 11 Jun 2010, 20:59, closed)

So many times!
has this happened to me. Still desperately failing to find a job that utilises my hard won batch skills. Difference between pipe & redirection anyone?
(PhantomPhlanPhlinger Phlung a Phlan on, Sat 12 Jun 2010, 2:58, closed)