6.1.1 About MySQL Shell

MySQL Shell dump and load utilities are built for use with MySQL DB Systems. To get the best functionality, always use the most recent version of MySQL Shell that is available to you.

The MySQL Server version used by MySQL HeatWave on AWS is fully supported by MySQL Shell. The minimum supported source MySQL Server versions supported by MySQL Shell are:

• MySQL 8.0.11
• MySQL 5.7.9

MySQL Shell provides the following utilities:

• dumpInstance(): MySQL instance export utility that dumps all compatible schemas to an Amazon S3 bucket, OCI Object Storage, or local files. By default, this utility dumps users, events, routines, and triggers. See MySQL Shell Instance and Schema Dump Utilities.
• dumpSchemas(): A schema export utility that dumps selected schemas to an Amazon S3 bucket, OCI Object Storage, or local files. See MySQL Shell Instance and Schema Dump Utilities.
• dumpTables(): A table export utility that dumps selected tables of a schema to an Amazon S3 bucket, OCI Object Storage, or local files.
• loadDump(): An import utility that imports schemas to a DB System. See MySQL Shell Dump Loading Utility. To import a schema to a DB System, MySQL Shell must be installed on a machine with access to the DB System. See Connecting with MySQL Shell.

MySQL Shell dump files are exported as DDL files specifying the schema structure and tab-separated value (.tsv) files containing the data. The .tsv files are compressed using zstd, by default, but gzip is also available as an option. You can also choose no compression.

To improve performance, large tables are chunked by default. The default chunk size is 32MB. Chunking can be disabled, but this is not recommended for large databases. During import, the chunks can be imported by parallel threads, which can greatly improve import performance.

For more information about MySQL Shell, refer to the MySQL Shell User Guide.

Parent topic: Exporting Data