Don't be scared of your production SQL database!

Developers should, at best, have read-only access to production databases. This greatly reduces the chances of making a mistake.

Or read-access for their regular, day-to-day account, and higher perms for an 'admin' account only for making authorised changes.

Thanks for the tips Katy, they are awesome.

I really liked point number 6, if not for backing up my database I would have lose a ton of data when I decided to delete mysql from my machine, so backup is really important here

You’re speaking my language here. I actually started my tech career with databases as a business analyst and learning front end now. So kinda backwards when compared to most people. These are great tips, especially the backing up part lol. I’ve made a few mistakes in my day with accidentally deleting data. But it’s all part of learning. Great post and info!

Some good points. I'd also add one slight word of warning when even doing SELECTs especially with a WHERE that doesn't use an index on the table, that can cause serious performance issues. As an aside, I like to use WITH(NOLOCK) which can increase the chance of a dirty read occuring but can improve performance