Table of Contents
There are many different MySQL client programs that connect to the server to access databases or perform administrative tasks. Other utilities are available as well. These do not establish a client connection with the server but perform MySQL-related operations.
This chapter provides a brief overview of these programs and then a more detailed description of each one. Each program's description indicates its invocation syntax and the options that it understands. See Chapter 4, Using MySQL Programs, for general information on invoking programs and specifying program options.
The following list briefly describes the MySQL client programs and utilities:
A utility that displays information about full-text indexes in
MyISAM tables. See
Section 8.2, “myisam_ftdump — Display Full-Text Index information”.
A utility to describe, check, optimize, and repair
MyISAM tables. See
Section 8.3, “myisamchk — MyISAM Table-Maintenance Utility”.
A utility that processes the contents of a
MyISAM log file. See
Section 8.4, “myisamlog — Display MyISAM Log File Contents”.
A utility that compresses MyISAM tables to
produce smaller read-only tables. See
Section 8.5, “myisampack — Generate Compressed, Read-Only MyISAM Tables”.
The command-line tool for interactively entering SQL statements or executing them from a file in batch mode. See Section 8.6, “mysql — The MySQL Command-Line Tool”.
A utility that analyzes queries in the MySQL query log using
EXPLAIN See
Section 8.7, “mysql_explain_log — Use EXPLAIN on Statements in Query Log”.
A script that checks the access privileges for a hostname, username, and database combination. See Section 8.8, “mysqlaccess — Client for Checking Access Privileges”.
A client that performs administrative operations, such as creating or dropping databases, reloading the grant tables, flushing tables to disk, and reopening log files. mysqladmin can also be used to retrieve version, process, and status information from the server. See Section 8.9, “mysqladmin — Client for Administering a MySQL Server”.
A utility for reading statements from a binary log. The log of executed statements contained in the binary log files can be used to help recover from a crash. See Section 8.10, “mysqlbinlog — Utility for Processing Binary Log Files”.
A table-maintenance client that checks, repairs, analyzes, and optimizes tables. See Section 8.11, “mysqlcheck — A Table Maintenance and Repair Program”.
A client that dumps a MySQL database into a file as SQL statements or as tab-separated text files. See Section 8.12, “mysqldump — A Database Backup Program”.
A utility that quickly makes backups of
MyISAM tables while the server is running.
See Section 8.13, “mysqlhotcopy — A Database Backup Program”.
A client that imports text files into their respective tables
using LOAD DATA INFILE. See
Section 8.14, “mysqlimport — A Data Import Program”.
A client that displays information about databases, tables, columns, and indexes. See Section 8.15, “mysqlshow — Display Database, Table, and Column Information”.
A utility that kills processes that match a pattern. Section 8.16, “mysql_zap — Kill Processes That Match a Pattern”.
A utility that displays the meaning of system or MySQL error codes. See Section 8.17, “perror — Explain Error Codes”.
A utility program that performs string replacement in the input text. See Section 8.18, “replace — A String-Replacement Utility”.
MySQL AB also provides a number of GUI tools for administering and otherwise working with MySQL servers. For basic information about these, see Chapter 4, Using MySQL Programs.
Each MySQL program takes many different options. Most programs
provide a --help option that you can use to get a
full description of the program's different options. For example,
try mysql --help.
MySQL client programs that communicate with the server using the MySQL client/server library use the following environment variables:
MYSQL_UNIX_PORT | The default Unix socket file; used for connections to
localhost |
MYSQL_TCP_PORT | The default port number; used for TCP/IP connections |
MYSQL_PWD | The default password |
MYSQL_DEBUG | Debug trace options when debugging |
TMPDIR | The directory where temporary tables and files are created |
Use of MYSQL_PWD is insecure. See
Section 5.9.6, “Keeping Your Password Secure”.
You can override the default option values or values specified in environment variables for all standard programs by specifying options in an option file or on the command line. See Section 4.3, “Specifying Program Options”.