>
> > Using a parameterized, prepared insert statement should be fast -
> maybe as fast using an "external table".
>
> mm, what do you by "parameterized, prepared insert statement"?
>
> in the background this is for use in an adhoc query tool, so i am doing
> some stringbuilding to generate the insert statements
>

This is about as slow as you can force things to be. Each statement will
need to be prepared before execution. You need to do some homework on
paramatised queries.
Alan