This isn't what I'd call a change in behavior. It's always been stated, for decades now, that you can't rely on the order of rows without an ORDER BY statement....

I would be looking for blocking chains first. That's the most likely scenario. A single query is blocking all the other queries which are waiting on it to complete. There...

Don't do #3. Down that path lies tons and tons of pain.

Yes, if you do #1 or #2 (and I lean heavily to the first option, the developers work locally...

So nice to still remember how R works after not touching it for a year.

The thing is, most people have a spare tire (or at least a donut). Most people have insurance. It's possible to communicate risk and get people to take a reasoned...

It might be unfair that I got this one right.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

YES!!!!

Ah well.

Nature of the beast. You'll have to love when the DBA is expected to also be a master in 5 different programming languages, 6 different operating systems, relational data, non-relational...

I'd bet back around to it. Knowing, through valid and successful tests, that you can restore your individual databases per the business RTO & RPO is the only way to...

This is what I suspected.  When you say...

When the business overrides you, there really isn't much you can do. Education is key. However, I'm still very much on the side of being part of the team rather...

Very much mirrors my experience. Once people know how things work, the actual labor to make it work is pretty simple.

A lot of developers are not at all familiar with managing their own instances.  This is more of a problem with Oracle where it's not as easy to restore...

Then that first suggestion is probably the better one. Still, testing, testing, testing. Don't guess. Know.