 <p>If the query builder is done in house, and if your query builder returns a the SQL statement in a string, you can parse it either looking for Update statements keyworks or with Regex, if you want to spare the users the trouble of creating an update query then realizing that they can't run it, then you should consider doing this check continiously as they create the query. Alternatively, you can use a third party query builder, like this one: <a href="http://www.activequerybuilder.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.activequerybuilder.com/</a>, unfortunately i belive it doesn't support anything else but Select statements but it may be worth the shot.</p>