Feeding data into MySQLdb LOAD DATA from Python

Larry Bates larry.bates at websafe.com
Wed Nov 14 18:34:35 EST 2007


John Nagle wrote:
>   Is it possible to feed data into a LOAD DATA command in MySQL without
> writing out the data to a file?  It's possible to do this using the
> MySQL command line and a UNIX FIFO, but that's kind of clunky.
> I have to load a few gigabytes of data, and using INSERT takes
> a whole day for each update.
> 
> And can this be done portably across UNIX and Windows?  Thanks.
> 
>                     John Nagle

Where is the data coming from?  Two suggestions:

1) There is a MySQL option to not commit every insert, sorry I can't remember 
what it is, but it REALLY speeds things up (especially if you have lots of 
keys).  Or drop all the keys load, the data, and recreate the keys.  Sounds odd, 
but it is a recommended method.
2) If data is coming from a file now, use LOAD DATA directly, don't go through 
Python.  You may even find writing to file and then loading it is very fast.  I 
recommend tab delimited as that seems to work well.

-Larry



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