Use the mysql bulk insert statement format if possible.
We found that using the traditional prepare/execute cycle was about 10 times slower to insert 2 million records, than using several bulk sql statements of about 500K.
my @rows = (
[qw(a b c d)],
[qw(e f g h)],
[qw(i j k l)],
[qw(m n o p)],
[qw(q r s t)],
[qw(u v w x)],
[qw(y z a b)],
[qw(c d e f)],
[qw(h i j k)],
[qw(l m n o)],
);
# -------------------------------------
# slower
# -------------------------------------
my $sth = $db->prepare("INSERT INTO mytable VALUES(?,?,?,?)")
or die "prepare failed: " . $db->errstr;
for my $row ( @rows ) {
$sth->execute(@$row);
}
# -------------------------------------
# faster
# -------------------------------------
my $sql = "INSERT INTO mytable VALUES ";
for my $row ( @rows ) {
$sql .= "('" . join("','",@$row) . '),";
}
substr($sql,-1)='';
$db->do( $sql );