This is so geeky, if you’re not caught up with the jargon please don’t read any further.

I’ve been busy creating a database for a new website. The database has a several tables, and in them, a number of fields including things like name, country, union, etc.

No matter what I did, the database was not updating.

Then when I changed the name of the field ‘union’ to ‘tradeunion’ it all worked.

And the reason? The word ‘union’ is a reserved word in My SQL 5.0

I am not making this up. Any web designer building an online database for a union may find themselves stuck, as I was, for days – until realizing this was the case.