Question

I was just wondering if we can execute a binary file in batch mode. I know that a text file can be executed in batch mode using mysql < batch-file.

One possible motivation for such a feature can be if you are creating a sql file from a program then you might want to do read/write in binary mode as it is fast. Does there exist any such way in mysql, I am just curious!!

Answer 1

You might want to try using the --hex-blob option of mysqldump to create dump files that are purely text. Typically you’ll do this:

mysqldump --hex-blob ... | gzip -9 > backup.sql.gz

Later you’ll restore:

gunzip -dc backup.sql.gz | mysql ...

In both cases ... represents the command-line options required to connect to your database.

This is not the most efficient way to load in large databases, but it works well enough in practice.