A while ago Baron Schwartz published a MySQL command-line tip: compare result sets.
A “SELECT * FROM world“, for example, can be checksummed, compared with another checksum made on a replica, or otherwise another table which is supposed to contains the exact same data.
I just wanted to note that if you’re dealing with a MyISAM table, a simple “SELECT * FROM” will not necessarily be too useful, since MyISAM can store rows in any particular order: two different settings of concurrent_insert, or perhaps an OPTIMIZEd table, can make for different ordering, hence different checksums.
Use of “ORDER BY …” is required if you want to have a consistent checksum. With MyISAM, you don’t usually want to count on natural row ordering, at any case.