Creating a backup of a database or table

Create a snapshot of a whole database:

mysqldump [options] db_name > filename.sql

Create a snapshot of multiple databases:

mysqldump [options] --databases db_name1 db_name2 ... > filename.sql
mysqldump [options] --all-databases > filename.sql

Create a snapshot of one or more tables:

mysqldump [options] db_name table_name... > filename.sql

Create a snapshot excluding one or more tables:

mysqldump [options] db_name --ignore-table=tbl1 --ignore-table=tbl2 ... > filename.sql

The file extension .sql is fully a matter of style. Any extension would work.

Found a mistake? Have a question or improvement idea? Let me know.

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