This is part of the Semicolon&Sons Code Diary - consisting of lessons learned on the job. You're in the databases category.
Last Updated: 2024-05-07
When our team came in as external consultants for Project M, we were given read-only access to the production database. This struck me as a great idea, because we could see everything we needed to, but had no risk of breaking things.
Other possibilities along these lines: