I am sure that most of the people have been aquaited with the mysqldump tool with allows to backup your database in the form of sql calls that create the table schema and populate then with the data that was in the database by using inserts.
Here is the basic syntax of the mysqldump call:
mysqldump -u<user> -p<pass> <dbname>
note that -p option (the password) must not contain spaces between the option itself and the actual password. so if your username johndoe and pasword is mypwd to access database with name mydb you would type:
mysqldump -u johndoe -pmypwd mydb
or
mysqldump -u johndoe -p mydb
the second would incurr a new input line to type in your password
or you can do
mysqldump -u johndoe mydb
if your db is not password protected
BUT all of this is pretty standard stuff,
what if you would like to backup only your data?
your solution would be to use --no-create-info option like so:
mysqldump -u<user> -p<pass> --no-create-info <dbname>
what if you would like to dump of only specific tables?
use mysqldump like so:
mysqldump -u<user> -p<pass> --no-create-info <dbname> [tables]
e.g. mysqldump -u johndoe mydb dbtable1 dbtable2 dbtable3
what if you would like to dump of several specific databases?
use mysqldump like so:
mysqldump -u<user> -p<pass> --databases <dbname1> [otherdbs]
e.g. mysqldump -u johndoe --databases mydb mydb1 mydb2 mydb3
and finally what if you want to backup all your databases?
use mysqldump like so:
mysqldump -u<user> -p<pass> --all-databases
e.g. mysqldump -u johndoe --all-databases
Hope these tips help! Enjoy :-)