Re: Frontend/Backend protocol changes?

Hey all,

I'm not sure if this is the correct list to ask this question, so I
appologize ahead of time if it is misguided.

I'm using DBD::Pg to insert large amounts of data into a Postgres
installation. We will occassionally (once every few weeks, perhaps)
get new chip layouts that need to be added. Each layout may have up to
250k spots which go into a Spot table.

My current code is glacially slow - on an otherwise zippy
dual-processor P4, it seems this insert will take 3 days.

I've gotten a bit of feedback from the Perl dbi-users list:

1) Transactions: My current approach was to do this inside a
transaction, but apparently the write-ahead-logging will not handle
250k logged inserts well.

Is this true, and I should commit after every 20 or so spots?

2) Indices: apparently every insert updates the indices on the
table. From my reading of the documentation, the indices aren't
updated inside a transaction, but instead at the end.

3) COPY: I could use COPY, but apparently triggers are not, well,
triggered under COPY.

Is this true? I have datestamps on my inserts for audit trails.

Thanks ahead of time for any help,
jas.