embarrasing Q from a fella who should know better...

[honeyb]

Given that I've a client who has an SQL db hosted on a server, and given that I've been asked to tranfer that db to another server, I'm wondering... can I transfer a physical file or do I have to rebuild the db and populate it with the cvrrent data?

Thanx for all input.
M

[HarryF]

Ahahaahahahaha! How embarrassing!

Kidding.

Think the answer is "it depends". With MySQL you can transfer the physical files that define the database (if you have access to the "mysql/data" directory it will be obvious which). But the alternative is to use the mysqldump (see this tutorial) to build one giant query which creates the tables then fills them with data. Most databases should at least allow you to do the last part.