title: Explore database contents from .sql file
body: <p>I inherited the maintenance of a small web forum. Near as I can tell, it is powered by a MySQL database on the backend (the frontend is all PHP).</p>
  
  <p>I need to extract some of the data (which also involves searching for the data I need to extract), but I don't want to touch the production database. I exported a database backup, which produced a several-hundred-megabyte .sql file.</p>
  
  <p>What's the best way to mine these data? I can see several options:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>grep through the .sql script in text mode, trying to extract the relevant data</li>
  <li>Load it up in sqlite3 (I tried doing this, but it barfed on some of the statements in the script and didn't produce any tables. I have no database experience whatsoever though, so I haven't ruled it out as a dead end just yet).</li>
  <li>Install MySQL on my home box, create a database, and execute the .sql script to recreate the data. Then just attach some database explorer tool.</li>
  <li>Find some (Linux) app which can understand the .sql file natively (seems unlikely after a bit of Googling).</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>Any pointers to which of these options (or one I haven't thought of yet) would be the most productive?</p>