Point-in-time recovery refers to recovery of data changes made since a given point in time. Typically, this type of recovery is performed after restoring a server from a full backup. The full backup restores the server to its state as of the time the backup was made. Point-in-time recovery then brings the server up to date incrementally from that point forward to a more recent time. The full backup can be made in several ways, such as those listed in Section 6.2, “Database Backup Methods”. The source of information for point-in-time recovery is the set of incremental backups represented by the binary log files generated subsequent to the full backup operation.

Point-in-time recovery requires that the MySQL server was started with the --log-bin option to enable binary logging (see Section 5.3.4, “The Binary Log”). You can use the mysqlbinlog utility to view the contents of or recover data from the binary log files, starting from a specified point in time (for example, since your last full backup) until the present or another specified point in time. See Section 4.6.6, “mysqlbinlog — Utility for Processing Binary Log Files”.

MySQL Enterprise.  For maximum data recovery, the MySQL Enterprise Monitor advises subscribers to synchronize to disk at each write. For more information, see http://www.mysql.com/products/enterprise/advisors.html.

To restore data from a binary log, you must know the location and name of the current binary log file. By default, the server creates binary log files in the data directory, but a path name can be specified with the --log-bin option to place the files in a different location. To determine the name of the current binary log file, issue the following statement:

mysql> SHOW MASTER STATUS;

To see a listing of all binary log files, use this statement:

mysql> SHOW MASTER LOGS;