I'm thinking threads are the answer...

Unless your box has multiple cpus, threads are unlikely to help much. Even if it does (have multiple cpus), with your source file and destination files (DB) on the same drive, your limitations are likely to be disk head rather than anything else. Using multiple threads, even on different cpus is not going to benefit you if they are both (all) constantly waiting on IO because the seek head is switching back and forth between the source and destination.

What sort of cpu usage are you showing whilst your script is running?

Do a super search for LOAD DATA INFILE, and put tachyon as the author. He has done lots of this stuff (on MySQL) and has worked out the best strategies. Look also for his advice about dropping indexes for the duration of the load and restoring them afterwards.

Examine what is said, not who speaks.        The end of an era!
"But you should never overestimate the ingenuity of the sceptics to come up with a counter-argument." -Myles Allen
"Think for yourself!" - Abigail        "Time is a poor substitute for thought"--theorbtwo         "Efficiency is intelligent laziness." -David Dunham
"Memory, processor, disk in that order on the hardware side. Algorithm, algorithm, algorithm on the code side." - tachyon

In reply to Re: Implementing a buffered read-and-insert algorithm by BrowserUk
in thread Implementing a buffered read-and-insert algorithm by radiantmatrix

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