Keeping good backups is crucial to a project. Backups consist of up-to-date backups and intermediary snapshots taken during development and production phases. The export feature of phpMyAdmin can generate backups and can also be used to send data to other applications.
Let's first clarify some vocabulary. In MySQL documentation, you will encounter the term dump and in other applications, the term backup or export. All these terms have the same meaning in the phpMyAdmin context.
MySQL includes mysqldump, a command-line utility that can be used to generate export files, but the shell access needed for command-line utilities is not offered by every host provider. Also, access to the export feature from within the Web interface is more convenient. This is why phpMyAdmin (since version 1.2.0) offers the Export feature with more export formats than mysqldump. This chapter will focus on phpMyAdmin's export features.
Before starting...