Jason - I think you should persist with the idea of external files as stated by David ...
I just ran a little test here on 400K records using your data as a sample - and found that an isql insert with commits takes about 280sec
on firebird 1.0 on PIII Linux Mandrake 8 - 1Gb processor whereas the external file option took 12 sec. Big difference.



Jason Frey wrote:

> > You will find turning Forced Writes OFF is a lot faster...
> >
> > BUT!!!! only do this if you are populating a DB, have it backed up,
> > or can otherwise recover from an error very quickly.
> >
> > DO NOT turn forced writes off for a production db, and especially do
> > not muck about with the forced writes setting when there are
> > connected users.
>
> Believe me, I've learned my lesson with that. :)
> This insertion is done in-house, before it gets sent to anyone.
> I don't suppose there's a way to set forced writes from a SQL statement, similarly to the way indexes can be activated/deactivated?
> Failing that, I'm going to have to play more with the idea of external files.. The data we get from our supplier isn't in a fixed length format. I wanted to keep it as is, because I already had a utility to convert comma and tab delimited files to insert statements. Yes, I'm lazy. :)
> I did a test with forced writes off, and it certainly sped it up, by about a factor of 4. Whether that's going to overcome the possible human error of sending out a DB with forced writes off, we'll see.
> If anyone else has any good ideas, please feel free to voice them.
>
> - Jason
>
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