Mysqldump with Modern MySQL Learn how to best use mysqldump in a modern version of MySQL. Mysqldump has many options (I count 111 options ?). Most of us are likely keeping it simple. Here's how I've typically exported a single database: mysqldump some_database > some_database.sql # Or with user auth mysqldump -u some_user -p some_database > some_database.sql # Or with gzip compression mysqldump so