With ndb_restore it is actually possible (talking MySQL Cluster
6.2 and 6.3 here, haven't looked at 5.0 for a long time) to
restore a single table into a CSV file that can be loaded using
LOAD DATA INFILE.
This can be useful if e.g:
- You want to extract data from a cluster table and load it into MyISAM/Innodb. This can be useful for reporting/data-mining purposes.
- You want to load data back into Cluster but into another table looking the same as the original table (not to spoil the original data) for some reason.
Number 2) could be used in scenarios where you want to upgrade
the schema by e.g changing the column length of a char(10) to
char(255) (not an online operation) and add a bunch of other
stuff. Please note that add column is an online operation,
changing the column length is not.
Here is an example on how you can do it generate a CSV file using …