As most people, especially those on a shared hosting environment, know, phpMyAdmin can be indespensible for managing your database setup. There are times, however, when you need to work with your databases without it - epecifically in doing a backup. If all you're left with is the command line and you need to make a backup quick, Sephiroth.it has a quick tip to help out.

I often read threads about export/import data from MySQL and it's always mentioned phpmyadmin as the only way to do that (with PHP indeed).

But that's not true, and it's indeed the slower way to do that, expecially when importing large database files (because phpmyadmin has problems with large db)...

He gives an example of the mysqldump functionality, complete with parameters for passing in things like a username and password. The reverse is also shown - reimporting the database data back into the system.