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mysqldump Best Practices (Part 2): Migrations Guide

(Part 1 here)

In the second and final part of our mysqldump best practices we will talk about how to handle the migration and import for stored-program objects and views from your MySQL database. To read more about the prerequisites for a successful dump and restore operation for large MySQL databases, check out the first part of this 2-part blog series.

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mysqldump Best Practices (Part 1): MySQL Prerequisites

mysqldump is a client utility that is used to perform logical backups of the MySQL database. This popular migration tool is useful for various use cases of MySQL such as:

  • Backup and restore of databases.
  • Migrating data from one server to another.
  • Migrating data across different managed MySQL service providers.
  • Migrating data between different versions of MySQL.

mysqldump works by reading the source database objects and generating a set of SQL statements that are stored in a dump file. By replaying these statements on the destination database server, the original data is reconstructed. Since this model uses a reading of the whole database and then essentially rebuilding, both dump and restore are time-consuming operations for a large database. The process might even turn cumbersome if you encounter errors during either dump or restore as it may lead you to fix the issues and re-run the operations. This is why it's important to plan well before you take up the dump and restore activity.