Chapter 6. Inserting Multiple Entries

When we deal with large amounts of data that are all going into the same database, running single instances of individual INSERT commands can take a ridiculous amount of time and waste a considerable amount of I/O. What we need is a way to insert multiple items in one go.

In this chapter, we will look at the following:

• How iteration can help us execute several individual INSERT statements rapidly

• Using executemany() to submit several INSERT statements in one go

• When not to use executemany()

• Throttling how much data is inserted at a time

At the end of the chapter, we will put these lessons to use in writing a conversion program that inserts the contents of a comma-separated value (CSV) file into MySQL.