How do I quickly rename a MySQL database (change s

Question

The MySQL manual at MySQL covers this.

Usually I just dump the database and reimport it with a new name. This is not an option for very big databases. Apparently RENAME {DATABASE | SCHEMA} db_name TO new_db_name; does bad things, exist only in a handful of versions, and is a bad idea overall.

This needs to work with InnoDB, which stores things very differently than MyISAM.

Answer 1

For those who are Mac users, Sequel Pro has a Rename Database option in the Database menu. http://www.sequelpro.com/

Answer 2

Simplest bullet-and-fool-proof way of doing a complete rename (including dropping the old database at the end so it's a rename rather than a copy):

mysqladmin -uroot -pmypassword create newdbname
mysqldump -uroot -pmypassword --routines olddbname | mysql -uroot -pmypassword newdbname
mysqladmin -uroot -pmypassword drop olddbname

Steps:

1. Copy the lines into Notepad.
2. Replace all references to "olddbname", "newdbname", "mypassword" (+ optionally "root") with your equivalents.
3. Execute one by one on the command line (entering "y" when prompted).

Answer 3

I posed a question on Server Fault trying to get around downtime when restoring very large databases by using MySQL Proxy. I didn't have any success, but I realized in the end what I wanted was RENAME DATABASE functionality because dump/import wasn't an option due to the size of our database.

There is a RENAME TABLE functionality built in to MySQL so I ended up writing a simple Python script to do the job for me. I've posted it on GitHub in case it could be of use to others.

Answer 4

Use these few simple commands:

mysqldump -u username -p -v olddatabase > olddbdump.sql
mysqladmin -u username -p create newdatabase
mysql -u username -p newdatabase < olddbdump.sql

Or to reduce I/O use the following as suggested by @Pablo Marin-Garcia:

mysqladmin -u username -p create newdatabase
mysqldump -u username -v olddatabase -p | mysql -u username -p -D newdatabase

Answer 5

For your convenience, below is a small shellscript that has to be executed with two parameters: db-name and new db-name.

You might need to add login-parameters to the mysql-lines if you don't use the .my.cnf-file in your home-directory. Please make a backup before executing this script.

---

#!/usr/bin/env bash

mysql -e "CREATE DATABASE $2 DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci;"
for i in $(mysql -Ns $1 -e "show tables");do
    echo "$1.$i -> $2.$i"
    mysql -e "rename TABLE $1.$i to $2.$i"
done
mysql -e "DROP DATABASE $1"

Answer 6

Here is a one-line Bash snippet to move all tables from one schema to another:

history -d $((HISTCMD-1)) && mysql -udb_user -p'db_password' -Dold_schema -ABNnqre'SHOW TABLES;' | sed -e's/.*/RENAME TABLE old_schema.`&` TO new_schema.`&`;/' | mysql -udb_user -p'db_password' -Dnew_schema

The history command at the start simply ensures that the MySQL commands containing passwords aren't saved to the shell history.

Make sure that db_user has read/write/drop permissions on the old schema, and read/write/create permissions on the new schema.