A simple stupid ‘UPDATE table SET something=another WHERE (always true)‘ in accident will easily destroy everything in the database. It could be a human mistake, an SQL injection/overflow/truncation attack, or a bug in the code who build the WHERE causes.
Are popular databases provide a feature that protect tables by limit maximum number of row could be updated in one SQL statement?
I mean some kind of defensive setting that apply to pre-table access right on database: no-way to bypass, less code to program, no human mistake(unless grant yourself too much access right).
You can add a trigger that checks how many rows are being updated (count the Inserted magic trigger table), and RAISEERROR if that’s too many rows.