Last night I needed to generate a script of a local MySQL database, dump the data, then load it on a remote server.  I didn’t have my handy dandy SQL Server Integration Services toolset, but did find a pretty cool utility:  http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/mysqldump.html. Running this program will generate a DROP/CREATE script for your database, and if you want, generate the INSERT statements for all the data in your tables. So here are the steps:

1. Open your command prompt

2. Navigate to your MySQL’s bin directory . For me, it is located in c:\program files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.1\bin.

3. Run the following command:

mysqldump –-user [your username] –-password=[your password] [database you want scripted] > [name of the file]

There are tons of switches, make sure you check out the MySQL documentation (http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/mysqldump.html). It takes what appears to be almost a nanosescond, and it’s done! You can then open the file, copy the contents, and then paste it into whatever MySQL tool you use to manage your database. I was using phpMyAdmin and ran the script without any issues.