Again a follow up to own posting ... sick man! :| However, thought a little experiments 'finding' worth sharing about one of the apps/methods mentioned ... MySQLDumper
It is a separte app that could be installed in moodle/local/ even if NOT a Moodle Plugin.
http://www.mysqldumper.net/
Install can be in /moodlecode/local/ by any directory name you choose as long as it's not in conflict with any local mod offered by Moodle.
If one runs multiple Moodles and has multiple DB's it sees all DB's even though the app is installed in one Moodle instance. Could be restricted to only ONE DB.
Provided a built in creation of an .htaccess file for directory giving protection from direct access. And, once created, does provide a link to remove the .htaccess flle.
Home screen gives OS, MySQL, and PHP version into with extensions of PHP installed. As well as dumper information … free space on server and a clickable listing of any backups that have been made … file is date/time stamped.
Allows choosing of the encoding of the backup file … defaults to what it sees in the DB - character set also.
Shows how many tables/records and size of the db.
Creates a .sql.gz file with 'default' options chosen for PHP (can also use Perl)
Shows/refreshes a progress screen and when it stops displays a page
The file contains 367 tables with 74.667 records.
File moodle25_2013_09_15_12_15.sql.gz (252.07 MB) was successfully created.
3 Minutes 14 Seconds, 113 Page refreshs
The file link is clickable … ie, one can download.
Has a SQL browser which looks somewhat like phpmyadmin.
IMHO, if one installed, then editing the warning given on updating modules providing a link to /local/mysqldumper (by whatever name you've given the folder), not so experienced Moodle admins could take care of business and run a DB backup just before updating a mod.
Wonder if a developer has looked into this ... and wonder how difficult (if permissible) it would be to develop a true MySQLDumper local mod.
My 2 cents of course.
'spirit of sharing', Ken