Thanks for the input everybody, but -- regardless of public opinion -- this solution works great! Searches that used to take 45 seconds under heavy load (to open 2000 flat files, alphabetize them, then print 20 results) now take no more than 3 seconds. And, the I/O load is MUCH happier too!

I wound up using SQL*Loader for searches with >1000 results, which adds about 1 second of overhead. SQL*Loader supports "direct load insert", but it slows things down in my situation. Direct load insert works best when creating a table from a query to another table, and it is not specific to Oracle 8. Oracle 7 can do it too.

Thanks again! If anyone decides to use my Alba Transform :) and wants some more specific code, let me know.

In reply to It works, it's fast, and it's scalable! by joealba
in thread DBI - Oracle 8 - Load many rows into a temp table w/o using SQL*Loader by joealba

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