Trying to copy entire MySQL schema using SQL commands - mysql

Question

After searching SO, I found answers to the following:
How to copy an entire MySQL schema using mysqldump
How to copy an entire MySQL schema using PHP
How to copy an entire MySQL schema using the enterprise edition of MySQL
How to copy an entire Microsoft SQL Server schema using the menus.
I also found a few hints about copying a MySQL schema using SQL commands.
My question: If I use the following SQL commands to copy a MySQL schema, what parts of the old schema would not be copied? Indexes? Constraints? Views? Anything else?
CREATE SCHEMA new_schema DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8;
CREATE TABLE new_schema.table1 LIKE old_schema.table1;
CREATE TABLE new_schema.table2 LIKE old_schema.table2;
CREATE TABLE new_schema.table3 LIKE old_schema.table3;
...;
INSERT INTO new_schema.table1 SELECT * FROM old_schema.table1;
INSERT INTO new_schema.table2 SELECT * FROM old_schema.table2;
INSERT INTO new_schema.table3 SELECT * FROM old_schema.table3;
...;

Answer 1

The CREATE TABLE ... LIKE will take care of indexes and constraints.
You should take care to SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=0 while you run this, because if table1 has a foreign key to table2, then creating table1 will fail. Likewise inserting data into the tables in the wrong order will fail.
Your script does not cover:
Views
Triggers
Stored procedures
Stored functions
Events
There are no CREATE... LIKE... statements for these other objects. You'll have to use SHOW CREATE... and then run it against in the context of the new schema. See the various SHOW CREATE... statements here: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/show.html
I also caution that the way you INSERT INTO... SELECT FROM... will work, but can fill up your rollback segment if the table is very large. Tools like pt-archiver try to copy tables in batches, ascending along the primary key, to avoid this problem.

Answer 2

I think routines can't be copied directly with sql commands (as far as I know there's not such anything like create procedure myProc like old.myProc).
I would recommend you use mysqldump, since it takes care of copying everything, including the data (if you don't want to copy the data, you can use the -d switch to prevent creating the insert statements).
If you want to create a "template" (a database that is exactly like another database, but without the data), you can use the following:
mysqldump [connectionParameters] -d -R -v yourOldDatabase > databaseTemplate.sql
The options explained:
[connectionParameters]: host, user and password
-d: Don't copy data
-R: Include routines in the dump
-v: Output what mysqldump is doing to the console
You can open this "light" sql script to check how the objects were created.
Hope this helps