[actionscripted]

Agreed. When we need to move things around we dump, find/replace and then re-serialize via https://github.com/rysi3k/Fix-Serialization. It's crazy there isn't a better way and the way WordPress handles URLs could be better.

[look_lookatme]

Have you considered using wp export/import in lieu of actual database dumps?

http://wp-cli.org/commands/export/