inserting a row of data in a huge table.....

[alanchinese]

i have a talbe that contains 60M to 100M rows of data

column name.....data type.....length

...key..................char...........42

...desc................varchar......200

...ref...................int...............4

 

all three columns are indexed and key is the primary key.

 

i am doing the following operation:

if (!DataIsInTable(key))

InsertIntoTable(key);

 

it's fairly slow when the number of rows are 100M.

i wonder if there are some advanced method to improve its performance?

what happen if i don't check if the data is in the table? would the failing process faster than selecting?

thankx....

[kejpa]

What database?

If you're using mySQL there's a REPLACE command that inserts if not present and updates (actually deletes and updates) if present.

 

Generally I sould say trying to insert and failing is faster than checking and then inserting. If you insert and the key is present then the insert fails, no harm done.

 

HTH

/Kejpa