On a very important Windows server we use a scheduled task set up by the mysqladmin utility to back up our critical data.
I'd like to use the simpler mysqldump command, but I want to ensure that the output is the same. Presumably mysqladmin and mysqldump both share a common core dumping component, so for any given setting in mysqladmin I ought to be able to find a configuration for mysqldump which produce the exact same output.
But how?
At the moment I am resorting to trial & error - but is there a better way to do it?
MySQL Administrator does not actually use the same core dumping ability as mysqldump. For some reason, it was reimplemented (and generally worse off than mysqldump uses).
So I would recommend you pick the options you most desire and use those in mysqldump.