My host has cpanel for me to play with. One of the features is phpmyadmin, which lets you get into your database(s), which lets you select 'export'. That's the thing you're talking about. Whenever I do an export I just select "select all" and check "export as file" then "go". I end up with a .sql file that happens to open nicely in a text editor. I can then use that .sql file to rebuild a database, but I have to do that inside phpmyadmin on a database using the 'SQL' button.

Back at cpanel I have an option called 'backup'. When I click it I get to backup a database. It makes me a .gz file of the entire database, but it's all crazy stuff that doesn't make any sense to me. The only reason I do that is because when I want to restore a database I can use the 'backup' feature and select 'restore' then browse to my .gz file. Much easier that way, but if you only want bits and pieces of the database then you would want to use 'export' instead.

For a while my host was broken. I would select 'backup' to backup a db and get a zero byte file with the correct file name. I knew that was no good! Otherwise I just sort of figured it works...

I used the cpanel backup, but that only worked through that cpanel, so it was useless if I wanted to take it elsewhere.

When I created the backups via PHPMyAdmin, it did make a SQL file, which was a text file I could read with a text editor. It's just that the PHPMyAdmin on my new server didn't like it.

I was definitely not selecting the right settings for restoring an already created empty database.