Moving Blog FROM Host to Local – a Can of Worms??

I’ve read a number of posts involving moving a blog from a local install of WP to a remote host, but not from a remote host to a local computer.

I have XAMPP all set up nicely with WordPress and I thought I could simply import my table data using the backup SQL of my online blog.

That backup contains lots of absolute links to the blog. Is it a simple matter, or is it opening a can of worms, to somehow convert all those absolute refs to relative refs that refer to the local WP and blog??