Hi,

Claudio Valderrama C. wrote:

> Hello, I see the request for a bulk loader appearing from time to time in
> our lists.
> I understand a bulk loader is a facility able to do a batch insertion with
> fast data insertion rates.
> But our normal, single row insertions are -generally speaking- acceptable in
> speed and faster than other servers.
>
> Therefore, to put the horse before the cart:
> - Why do users need a bulk loader? Aren't we enough fast to insert records?
> For example, our classic solution is to prepare a parameterized INSERT
> statement and keep feeding data as parameters.
> - What features do users expect from a bulk loader? It's mostly a client
> side thing or a set of improvements in the server side, too?

1. Traditional approach is not fast and smart enough for real bulk loads
(millions of records) due to remote protocol overhead. Using external
tables is *way* faster, but complicated and ext. tables have very
limited support for data types (especially blobs are a show stopper
here). Because remote is the bottleneck here, it's pure server side feature.

2. Good bulk load solution should also provide automatic handling of
deferred index updates (at least for user defined ones) and ability to
disable triggers on updated tables.

3. For symmetry, bulk load should also provide bulk dump. It would make
data transfer between databases of the same structure more easy.

best regards
Pavel Cisar
IBPhoenix