Kurz notiert: Create a mysql-dump which can be easily imported again:
mysqldump -f --add-drop-table --user=MYSQL_USERNAME
--password=MYSQL_PASSWORD DATABASE-NAME >DATABASE-DUMP.sql
Additional gzip-compression:
mysqldump -f --add-drop-table --user=MYSQL_USERNAME
--password=MYSQL_PASSWORD DATABASE-NAME | gzip --best > DATABASE-DUMP.sql.gz
Load a dump back into a database:
mysql -u MYSQL_USERNAME --password=MYSQL_PASSWORD
-D DATABASE_NAME < DATABASE-DUMP.sql