i have absolutely no experience or knowledge in IT/computer science whatsoever. i saw a post about someone who messed up at work by ‘deleting prod’, and apparently that’s a super big deal. google isn’t helping bc i don’t understand any of these CS terms.
In: Technology
Think about a quarterback throwing an interception in a real game (production) vs throwing an interception in practice (test environment). Which one is worse?
BTW if you’re having difficulties googling something it’s not you, there is an ongoing enshitification of search engines going on.
Thankfully we live in a world of AI chat bots, so you can pretty much go as in depth as you need.
Here’s what ChatGPT had to say about this topic:
Prompt: “I saw a post on reddit the other day about a person “deleting the production database”.
What do they mean? Why is it humorous or tragic?”
Response: “When someone mentions “deleting the production database,” they’re referring to accidentally or intentionally erasing the database that contains live data used by a company or service. It’s often seen as humorous in a dark, ironic way because it’s a major mistake that can cause significant disruption or loss of valuable information. The humor comes from the absurdity of such a catastrophic error happening and the realization of the consequences. However, in reality, it’s tragic because it can lead to downtime, data loss, financial loss, and potentially even impact the reputation of the person responsible and the organization they work for.”
Followup prompt: “Please teach me a bit about databases, their use, why they are important and what steps need to be overlooked to “delete the production database” ”
Response: “Sure, databases are essential tools in modern computing, used to store, organize, and retrieve data efficiently. They’re crucial for various applications, from managing customer information in businesses to powering dynamic content on websites.
Here’s why databases are important:
1. **Data Organization**: Databases help organize vast amounts of data into structured formats, making it easier to access and manipulate.
2. **Data Integrity**: They ensure data integrity by enforcing rules and constraints, such as data types, relationships between data, and ensuring that only valid data is stored.
3. **Data Security**: Databases provide mechanisms for controlling access to data, protecting sensitive information from unauthorized users.
4. **Data Consistency**: They help maintain consistency across multiple users and applications accessing the same data concurrently.
5. **Scalability**: Databases can scale to handle large volumes of data and high numbers of simultaneous users, ensuring that systems remain responsive as they grow.
Now, regarding the steps needed to “delete the production database” accidentally:
1. **Access Control**: Accidental deletion can occur if someone with sufficient permissions mistakenly executes a delete command without proper verification or understanding of the consequences.
2. **Backup Procedures**: If there are inadequate backup procedures in place, deleting the production database can result in permanent loss of data. Regular backups are essential to mitigate this risk.
3. **Testing Environments**: Production databases should be distinguished clearly from testing or development environments. Accidentally executing commands meant for testing or development in the production environment can lead to catastrophic data loss.
4. **Change Management**: Changes to production systems, including database modifications or deletions, should follow a formal change management process with proper approvals and documentation to minimize the risk of errors.
5. **Monitoring and Alerts**: Implementing monitoring systems and alerts can help detect unusual or potentially harmful activities, such as large-scale data deletion, allowing for timely intervention to prevent or mitigate damage.
Overall, safeguarding the production database involves a combination of access control, backup procedures, proper environment segregation, change management practices, and monitoring mechanisms to prevent accidental deletion and minimize the impact if it does occur.”
To add to what others have said, at work we have 4 environments:
1. Production – this is where real world data resides and validated and approved code runs. Anything happening here has an impact on actual operations. So you can raise contracts, approve transactions etc etc here.
2. Training – a copy of production used for, you guessed, training. Code here is an exact copy of code in production. Data is updated fairly frequently. You can do whatever you want here to train yourself, has no impact on the real world.
3. Staging or testing – this is where new code/applications/features are pushed to the client to test, kind of beta testing. Again, no impact on actual real world data.
4. Development – this seats in every developer’s machine. It’s where they do their development and alpha testing.
So, yes, if someone deletes production database we’re basically f*****. But of course we have disaster recovery scenarios inbuilt into the application and recent backups. But we may lose a day of work if something were to happen to prod database.
Imagine withdrawing all of your money from the bank, closing all of your accounts, and then setting it all on fire.
That’s what it means to “delete the production database”.
Imagine you’ve finished writing a really long and hard essay for school and when you go to delete all the “essay-early-draft”, “essay-early-draft-new”, “essay-early-draft-new-new”, and “essay-early-draft-new-new-newest” files you’ve somehow managed to end up with, you accidentally delete “essay-final” instead.
Kind of like that.
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