Re: Optimize for insertions?

Thanks for the advice, everyone...I've got my mysql dump files (about 300
50MB files) inserting at a rate of about 1 minute each now vs. 1.5 hours
each before(!)

I'm worried about creating indexes after all the data is in there,
though...I'm going to need 4-5 indexes. Isn't that going to take a hella
long time? How are indexes created anyhow? I would assume a linear search
through every record in the table...would vacuum help at all? how bout
vacuum analyze?

----- Original Message -----
From: "Gregory Wood" <gregw(at)com-stock(dot)com>
To: "Gurupartap Davis" <partap(at)yahoo(dot)com>
Cc: "PostgreSQL-General" <pgsql-general(at)postgresql(dot)org>
Sent: Monday, November 26, 2001 3:09 PM
Subject: Re: [GENERAL] Optimize for insertions?

> 1. Look into using the COPY command. This allows fast bulk imports.
> 2. Consider tweaking your transactions. If you are not using transactions
> (possible considering you are migrating from MySQL), understand that
> PostgreSQL creates an implicit transaction for each statement, unless an
> explicit transaction is created. That means that you are dealing with the
> additional overhead of 200 million transactions on top of the INSERTs
> themselves. Of course, doing everything inside a single transaction can be
> cumbersome too. Try stuffing a thousand or so INSERTs into a single
> transaction and see if that speeds things up.
> 3. If you created indexes, drop them during your import, and readd them
> after you've finished. Maintaining those slows things down a bit as well.
>
> Hope this helps!
>
> Greg
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Gurupartap Davis
> To: pgsql-general(at)postgresql(dot)org
> Sent: Monday, November 26, 2001 4:17 PM
> Subject: [GENERAL] Optimize for insertions?
>
>
> Hi,
>
> I'm trying to migrate a mysql database to postgresql. I've got the tables
> all set up, but inserting the data from the mysql dumps is taking forever.
> I've got about 200 million rows in the big table (growing by about 1.5
> million per day), but at the 100 inserts/second I'm getting, this will
take
> over 3 weeks. MySQL on the same machine averages about 1100-1200
> inserts/second (no, I'm not running them both at the same time ;-)
>
> Any thoughts on how to tweak the postmaster for quick inserts? I've got
> fsync turned off, but that's about all I've tried so far.
>
> I'm running postgresql 7.1.3 on Linux (Redhat 7.2 with ext3) with a
700MHz
> processor, 256MB RAM, and an 80GB IDE HD
>
> Thanks
> -partap
>
>
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