Re: Best way to import data in postgresl (not "COPY")

On Wed, Jul 22, 2009 at 08:24:22PM +0200, Denis BUCHER wrote:
> SELECT ... FROM ODBC source
> foreach row {
> INSERT INTO postgresql
> }
>
> The problem is that this method is very slow...
>
> Does someone has a better suggestion ?

Using COPY[1] is normally the preferred solution to getting data into PG
fast.  Some languages make this easier than others, if you can generate
SQL that looks like:

  COPY table (col1,col2) FROM STDIN WITH CSV;
  13,hello
  42,"text with,comma"
  \.

then you should be in luck---just bung this off to the ODBC driver
as is and all should good.  If you need to copy more than will fit
in a string, arrange to put a few thousand rows in each batch, and
generate them and insert them one-at-a-time in a transaction.  Using
tab-delimited mode (drop the WITH CSV) is possible, but most languages
will provide library code for generating CSV files and hence will
probably be easier to get correct.

--
  Sam  http://samason.me.uk/

 [1] http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/sql-copy.html