Database insert performance

Question

We are planning to implement a system for logging a high frequency of market ticks into a DB for further analysis. To simply get a little what kind of storage performance we can

Answer 1

Did you test with several application instances connected the the Database Server and inserting data at the same time or just one application?

I think you should be testing with multiple instances especially for bulk insertion and see what configuration works for you. Different transaction isolation modes can greatly affect the performance for concurrent access (especially write access). SQL Server for example, I found that lower isolation mode than ReadCommitted should be used for highly concurrent environment or you will find lot of cases of timeout. This should of course be used when the risk of dirty read is not a concern (which fit your case judging from your description).

PS: Forgive me if I'm stating the obvious here.