Importing Structure and Data - Mastering phpMyAdmin 3.4 for Effective MySQL Management - page 146

In recent phpMyAdmin versions, the Partial import feature can also solve this
file size problem. By selecting the Allow the interruption… checkbox, the import
process will interrupt itself if it detects that it is close to the time limit. We can also
specify a number of queries to skip from the start, in case we successfully import a
number of rows and wish to continue from that point.
Uploading into a temporary directory
On a server, a PHP security feature called open_basedir (which limits the files
that can be opened by PHP to the specified directory tree) can impede the upload
mechanism. In this case, or for any other reason, when uploads are problematic, the
$cfg['TempDir'] parameter can be set with the value of a temporary directory. This
is probably a sub-directory of phpMyAdmin's main directory, into which the web
server is allowed to put the uploaded file.
Importing SQL files
Any file containing MySQL statements can be imported via this mechanism. This
format is the more commonly used for backup/restore purposes. The dialog is
available in the Server view, Database view, or the Table view, via the Import
page, or in the Query window.