a tool that splits a mysqldump into several files (chunks), one file per table This tool splits a single mysqldump file in several files - one file per table. The idea behind splitting a dump in several files is to be able to import the dump back in parallel processes (see the parallel restore tool below). a tool that imports the tables in parallel This tool does a parallel import of tables in mysql. The idea here is that the regular 'mysql < dump' restoration is single process, meaning that you can't utilize other processors, if you have more than one.
- Vinu Thomas