How to Make a MySQL Structure Dump?

When you want to reverse engineer an existing MySQL database into DeZign for Databases you can connect to the database directly or you can make a database structure dump and import that structure dump. A dump will contain SQL statements to create the table and/or populate the table.

There are several ways to create a MySQL database structure dump. You can use the MySQL utility "mysqldump" or you can use PHPMyAdmin.

The mysqldump utility is a utility to dump a database or a collection of the database for backup or for transferring the data to another SQL server (not necessarily a MySQL server).

shell> mysqldump [OPTIONS] database [tables]

OR mysqldump [OPTIONS] --databases [OPTIONS] DB1 [DB2 DB3...]

OR mysqldump [OPTIONS] --all-databases [OPTIONS]

If you don't give any tables or use the --databases or --all-databases, the whole database(s) will be dumped.

You can get a list of the options your version of mysqldump supports by executing mysqldump --help.

More information can be found in MySQL's online manual: http://www.mysql.com/doc/m/y/mysqldump.html

You can also make a dump with PHPMyAdmin. Start PHPMyAdmin. Select the database. On the mainscreen you'll find "View dump (schema) of database". Select "structure only" and press "GO". The dump will be generated for you.


See also: How to make a MS SQL Server structure dump?, How to make a DB2 structure dump?