How to speed up insertion performance in PostgreSQL

Question

I am testing Postgres insertion performance. I have a table with one column with number as its data type. There is an index on it as well. I filled the database up using thi

Answer 1

In addition to excellent Craig Ringer's post and depesz's blog post, if you would like to speed up your inserts through ODBC (psqlodbc) interface by using prepared-statement inserts inside a transaction, there are a few extra things you need to do to make it work fast:

1. Set the level-of-rollback-on-errors to "Transaction" by specifying Protocol=-1 in the connection string. By default psqlodbc uses "Statement" level, which creates a SAVEPOINT for each statement rather than an entire transaction, making inserts slower.
2. Use server-side prepared statements by specifying UseServerSidePrepare=1 in the connection string. Without this option the client sends the entire insert statement along with each row being inserted.
3. Disable auto-commit on each statement using SQLSetConnectAttr(conn, SQL_ATTR_AUTOCOMMIT, reinterpret_cast(SQL_AUTOCOMMIT_OFF), 0);
4. Once all rows have been inserted, commit the transaction using SQLEndTran(SQL_HANDLE_DBC, conn, SQL_COMMIT);. There is no need to explicitly open a transaction.

Unfortunately, psqlodbc "implements" SQLBulkOperations by issuing a series of unprepared insert statements, so that to achieve the fastest insert one needs to code up the above steps manually.