MySQL - SELECT * INTO OUTFILE LOCAL problem.

Question

MySQL is awesome! I am currently involved in a major server migration and previously, our small database used to be hosted on the same server as the client. So we used to do this : SELECT * INTO OUTFILE .... LOAD DATA INFILE ....

Now, we moved the database to a different server and SELECT * INTO OUTFILE .... no longer works, understandable - security reasons I believe. But, interestingly LOAD DATA INFILE .... can be changed to LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE .... and bam, it works.

I am not complaining nor am I expressing disgust towards MySQL. The alternative to that added 2 lines of extra code and a system call form a .sql script. All I wanted to know is why LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE works and why is there no such thing as SELECT INTO OUTFILE LOCAL?

I did my homework, couldn't find a direct answer to my questions above. I couldn't find a feature request @ MySQL either. If someone can clear that up, that had be awesome!

Is MariaDB capable of handling this problem?

Answer 1

Re: SELECT * INTO OUTFILE

Check if MySQL has permissions to write a file to the OUTFILE directory on the server.

Answer 2

The path you give to LOAD DATA INFILE is for the filesystem on the machine where the server is running, not the machine you connect from. LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE is for the client's machine, but it requires that the the server was started with the right settings, otherwise it's not allowed. You can read all about it here: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/load-data-local.html

As for SELECT INTO OUTFILE I'm not sure why there is not a local version, besides it probably being tricky to do over the connection. You can get the same functionality through the mysqldump tool, but not through sending SQL to the server.

Answer 3

From the manual: "The SELECT ... INTO OUTFILE statement is intended primarily to let you very quickly dump a table to a text file on the server machine. If you want to create the resulting file on some client host other than the server host, you cannot use SELECT ... INTO OUTFILE. In that case, you should instead use a command such as mysql -e "SELECT ..." > file_name to generate the file on the client host."

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/select.html

An example:

mysql -h my.db.com -u usrname--password=pass db_name -e 'SELECT foo FROM bar' > /tmp/myfile.txt