A Simple Database Backup
You can use mysqldump to create a simple backup of your database using the following syntax.

mysqldump -u [username] -p [password] [databasename] > [backupfile.sql]

o [username] - this is your database username
o [password] - this is the password for your database
o [databasename] - the name of your database
o [backupfile.sql] - the file to which the backup should be written.

The output dump file will contain all the SQL statements needed to create the table in a database. The file can also be ftp over to a another server for creating the database and table for disater recovery purpose.

Below is an example to backup the database called employee
mysqldump -u mysql -p password employee> emp.sql
 
How to restore mysql database
Here's how you would restore your database from a .sql backup file
mysql -u [username] -p [password] [database_to_restore] < [backupfile]

example : Here's how you would restore your emp.sql file to the employee database. Easy isn't it ?
mysql -u mysql -p password employee < emp.sql
 
Restoring mysql database without username and passwd as root

syntax : mysql [database_to_restore] < [backupfile]

example: root@srvr # mysql database_name < database_backfile.sql

Note :Make sure the database is already existing or created before restoring
 
Backing up only specified tables
If you need to make a backup of certain tables in your database that is possible by only specifying the tables with the correct syntax. For example : you want to only backup 2 tables called employee_dept and employee_data of a database called employee, you can run the below mysql commad at command line:

mysqldump --add-drop-table -u mysql-p password employee employee_dept employee_data > empl_tables.sql

So the syntax for the command to issue is:

mysqldump -u [username] -p [password] [databasename] [table1-list2 ]

[tables-list] - This is a list of tables to backup. Each table is separated by a space.