Optimizing this Core Data request

Question

I have an entity in Core Data named MusicInterest. I have to add 5000 or so of these at a time and my current process is to query to see if the MusicInterest exists already,

Answer 1

Implementing Find-or-Create Efficiently in the "Core Data Programming Guide" describes a pattern that might be useful here. The basic idea is:

• Sort your list of items that you want to insert/update by some unique id that is also stored in the database.
• Perform a single fetch request that fetches all objects from the database that have an id from your list, sorted by the same id.
• Now traverse your list and the array of fetched items in parallel, to find which items have to be inserted and which items already exist and can be updated.