I'm still catching up on things... Sorry you had to bang around on this...
Instead of import, check out the FAQ and the threads on using the "insert" command to move data from one table to another (even between databases) and the LOAD command to insert text-file (back up files) into the database.
If you have your own server, and access to the mysql subdirectory, and data directory, you can make a copy, or backup, of the database by simply copying the files to a new subdirectory. MySQL will find the files,even without a restart, the next time a request for that database is made.
It's really easy to make databases, use them, and then get rid of them when you want to.
To erase a database, you just delete the subdirectory (or you could go through MySQL interface.
This is a nice feature of MySQL over the larger transaction-based DBMS like Oracle.
To play with their "database" systems you have to do a lot of work, or consume massive CPU and system resources.
With MySQL the same things are essentially a cp -R * command...
When you create a database, it's really a subdirectory in the ..../mysql/data/ directory. Each table is a set of 3 files.
Don't misunderstand, MySQL keeps a lot of tables and files "open" in memory, meaning the data in the files may not be the most current copy, but the data in the files is a complete "snapshot" of the system at a certain point in time.
Because MySQL is compiled for each system, there's no guarantee the raw data files are transportable from system to system, but you _can_ copy from
..../mysql/data/dir1 to ..../mysql/data/dir2
and request the database "dir2" and it will now exist as an exact copy of the "dir1" database as of the moment you made the copy.
Because this is all on Unix, and seems so complex with the command line interface, it's easy to miss out on how simple MySQL is, and was designed to be.
It was built after the other systems, to fill a need, and to avoid some of the problems the other systems got backed into and had to work around (in order to maintain compatibility)
The MySQL MSQL book is _really_ a worth while investment. You will find yourself using it again and again to get data out of the databases without going through Links (mostly for special reasons -- curiousity, back ups, expansions, etc)
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POSTCARDS.COM -- Everything Postcards on the Internet
www.postcards.com LinkSQL FAQ: www.postcards.com/FAQ/LinkSQL/
) - I have the backups, and have restored the tables, but want to load the old data back, anyone know how to do this? 