MySQL :: MySQL 3.23, 4.0, 4.1 Reference Manual :: 6.4 Using mysqldump for Backups

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6.4. Using mysqldump for Backups

This section describes how to use mysqldump to produce dump files, and how to reload dump files. A dump file can be used in several ways:

As a backup to enable data recovery in case of data loss.
As a source of data for setting up replication slaves.
As a source of data for experimentation:
- To make a copy of a database that you can use without changing the original data.
- To test potential upgrade incompatibilities.

mysqldump produces two types of output, depending on whether the --tab option is given:

Without --tab, mysqldump writes SQL statements to the standard output. This output consists of CREATE statements to create dumped objects (databases, tables, and so forth), and INSERT statements to load data into tables. The output can be saved in a file and reloaded later using mysql to recreate the dumped objects. Options are available to modify the format of the SQL statements.
With --tab, mysqldump produces two output files for each dumped table. The server writes one file as tab-delimited text, one line per table row. This file is named tbl_name.txt in the output directory. The server also sends a CREATE TABLE statement for the table to mysqldump, which writes it as a file named tbl_name.sql in the output directory.