MySQL 5.7.8-rc2 was released today, and features a new server utility called mysqlpump. This utility contains a number of major improvements over mysqldump including:
- Parallel processing of databases, and of objects within databases, to speed up the dump process
- For dump file reloading, faster secondary index creation for InnoDB tables by adding indexes after rows are inserted
- Better control over which databases and database objects (tables, views, stored programs, user accounts) to dump
- Dumping of user accounts as account-management statements (CREATE USER, GRANT) rather than as inserts into the mysql system database
- Capability of creating compressed output
- Progress indicator
What I wanted to caution however, is that mysqlpump is not currently consistent. That is to say that currently each of the dump threads lack a synchronization point before they start backing up the data. This makes it currently unsafe as a general purpose backup replacement.
The mysqlpump developers are aware of this limitation, and are busy adding this feature into the utility.
Edit: This functionality was added to MySQL 5.7.11.