The first time I read about MySQL*, I thought the drop database command was a dangerously easy way to delete a full database. Yesterday afternoon, I found out the hard way that it is a rather dangerous command, especially when your terminal window has a different database loaded than you thought it had… And for a change I regretted there was no Microsoft-style ‘are you sure you want to delete the whole database and be under severe stress for the rest of the evening?’-warning.

Luckily, there are things such as backups and server logs, the combination of which led to the harm being rather small after all and relatively easy to undo. But still, it took some hours before the stress got out of my body.

* MySQL is a widely used database system. It should, apparently, be pronounced my sequel rather than my s-q-l.