title: How to keep databases synchronized between hosting account and a local testing server?
body: <p>I have several databases hosted on a shared server, and a local testing server which I use for development. </p>
  
  <p>I would like to keep both set of databases somewhat synchronized (more or less daily).</p>
  
  <p>So far, my ideas to solve the problem seem very clumsy. Anyway, for reference, here is what I have considered so far:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li><p>Make a database dump from online databases, trash local databases, and recreate the databases from the dump. It's a lot of work and requires a lot of download time (which guarantees I won't do it as much as I would like it to be done) </p></li>
  <li><p>Write a small web service to access the new data, and write a small application locally to communicate with said web service, download the newest data, and update the local databases.</p></li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>Both solutions sound like a lot of work for a problem that is probably already solved a zillion times over. Or maybe it's even an existing feature which I completely overlooked.</p>
  
  <p>Is there an easy way to keep databases more or less in synch? Ideally something that I can set up once, schedule and forget about.</p>
  
  <p>I am using MySQL 5 (MyISAM) databases on both servers. </p>
  
  <p>=============</p>
  
  <p>Edit: I had a look at replication, but it seems that I can't go that route because the shared hosting does not give me enough control on the server itself (I got most permissions on my databases, but not on the MySQL server itself)</p>
  
  <p>I only need to keep the data synchronized, nothing else. Is there any other solution that doesn't require full control on the server?</p>
  
  <hr>
  
  <p>Edit 2:
  Sorry, I forgot to mention I am running on a LAMP stack on the shared server, so Windows-only solutions won't work. </p>
  
  <p>I am surprised to see that there is no obvious off-the-shelves solution for this problem.</p>