rails/rails — pull request #6738 by steveklabnik (2012-06-14 16:57:12+00:00)
Title: Remove update_attribute.

Historically, update_attribute and update_attributes are similar, but
with one big difference: update_attribute does not run validations.
These two methods are really easy to confuse given their similar
names. Therefore, update_attribute is being removed in favor of
update_column.

See the thread on rails-core here:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/rubyonrails-core/BWPUTK7WvYA