» Workbench called me a dummy! Todd's MySQL Blog

01 Sep 2010

Workbench called me a dummy!

Seriously, it did. Sorta.

I use Workbench for my daily work, and it’s a great tool. If you haven’t tried the 5.2 release yet, you should. While performing some maintenance, I happened to issue a DELETE statement against a table which had no indexes (it was 10 rows), and Workbench complained:

Error Code: 1175 You are using safe update mode and you tried to update a table without a WHERE that uses a KEY column

It turns out this is a new feature in 5.2.26 (and is still there in 5.2.27) – Workbench now uses the equivalent of –safe-updates mode for the mysql command-line client (also known as the –i-am-a-dummy option – seriously). This wasn’t exactly convenient for me, especially since the DELETE was part of a larger script which I then had to revise and step through manually after it failed, but there’s an easy way to change this behavior. If you’re like me, you might consider disabling this:

Go to Edit -> Preferences
Select the SQL Editor tab
Uncheck “Forbid UPDATE and DELETE statements without a WHERE clause (safe updates)”

Despite the text, the –safe-updates mode affects more than UPDATE and DELETE statements without WHERE clauses – it requires such statements to explicitly use indexes.

I’m changing this behavior on my installation before I run into other problems.

I’m no dummy.

Posted in MySQL and tagged MySQL, workbench

18 thoughts on “Workbench called me a dummy!”

robsn on 09/15/2010 at 12:14 AM said:

ty. just ran into that X)
Vince Kruger on 09/15/2010 at 2:45 AM said:

Hi,

just a note on this, remember to restart the application after making this change…
kostrivec on 09/15/2010 at 5:23 AM said:

That’s what i was looking for, thank!
By the way, don’t forget to RESTART workbench after change of this setting to make it work.-]
Todd Farmer on 09/17/2010 at 7:22 AM said:

My change took effect without a restart, but it’s a good tip to keep in mind if your experience differs. Thanks Vince and kostrivec!
Matt Way on 09/17/2010 at 8:01 PM said:

Grrrr

I hate this dumbing down of software.

Thanks for the article on how to disable “safe-mode”
tmloliv on 10/19/2010 at 5:25 AM said:

Perfect! That’s exactly what I needed! Thank you, thank you, thank you for sharing.
HermanX on 11/07/2010 at 4:08 PM said:

It didnt allow me even when I had where clause …
Haxy Waxy on 11/17/2010 at 2:14 PM said:

LOL Gota love command line dummies! I am one too!
Gyamfi on 12/26/2010 at 6:11 AM said:

Thanks, I just run into this myself… and it took me a while to realize I had to restart. Was it too hard to have a prompt about restarting app for changes that need restart?

Great tool, but a lot of strange behavior. Worth it though.
Jason on 01/26/2011 at 2:41 PM said:

Thanks a lot. I just ran into this and was getting super pissed off. This worked after I restarted the program.
mandeep gill on 02/17/2011 at 9:48 AM said:

thanx .. i just updated from workbench 5.1 to 5.2. and it is giving me lot of troubles. thanx for the help.
punkpette on 02/18/2011 at 8:46 AM said:

lol thank u
PS on 05/15/2011 at 10:17 PM said:

That helped.
Thank you
Vamshi Kiran on 06/17/2011 at 1:45 AM said:

Thanks a lot, its working after unchecking the option which you have mentioned in the article. Thanks once again…
WenocheUnsons on 07/04/2011 at 5:34 AM said:

It agree, very amusing opinion
Bosh on 02/15/2012 at 12:29 PM said:

Thanks, this is exactly what I was looking for
Nicser on 05/20/2013 at 10:24 PM said:

Gracias.
Todd Farmer on 05/22/2013 at 10:18 AM said:

De nada!

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