Getting the database onto the server

We now have a database on the local server but how do we go about getting it onto the remote server so that our web page can access the database? Well the first step is extract the data from the MySQL database, to do this I used a utility called `mysqldump' which comes with the MySQL package, this can be used to dump all the information from a database to a text file, the syntax I used was;

	$> mysqldump -u <username> -p <databasename> --opt -c -e > <databasename>.dump

This then created a file called <databasename>.dump which contained all the information about the database, which can be used to insert all the data into the database, which is what we are going to do to get the information into the remote database. This file may be quite large so before continuing I would suggest compressing it using a compression utility such as WinZip, whichever compression program that you use, there must be a decompression utility on the server with which you can decompress it, for WinZip there is a program called `unzip' on the server with which we can decompress the data file, so I will be using `zip' compression for this task. After we have compressed this file we will have a file called something like <databasename>.zip which now needs uploading onto the server, to do this you will need FTP access to the server which contains the MySQL server/client, once you are connected via FTP (using your own username and password) you need to upload this file into your home directory, once uploaded you may disconnect and need to connect to the server using `telnet', the syntax for this program is such `telnet <hostname>', where <hostname> is the server where you just disconnected from with your FTP client, once you have connected to this server you need to access your home directory (/home/<username>) where you have just uploaded (if you are not already in this directory) and decompress the compressed data file which you uploaded, you will now have a data file which needs inserting into the database, so to do this we simply call the MySQL client to parse it for use like so (substituting as usual);

	$> mysql -u <username> -p <databasename> < <databasename>.dump

If any errors occur then check that you have done everything correctly, otherwise congratulations your database is now on the server and ready to be accessed by your web page! Good luck.