Load using Java

Cary Millsap is writing good things about measuring when tuning performance. His paper Making friends "Optimizing the insert program" is talking how to insert 10000 rows using Java. There are presented only possibilities to insert using Statement in a loop or using PreparedStatement in a loop. Should there be a alternative way also presented? Avoid looping statements in Java and populate all rows just in single call to the database.

Timing results inserting 10000 rows:

Array
Executed in 0 min 0 s 313 ms.
Prepared
Executed in 0 min 2 s 985 ms.

ARRAY:

create table si (s number(19),s2 number(19));
create or replace type nums is object ( n1 number(19), n2 number(19));
create type sit is table of nums;

    private static void insertArray(Connection c, List elems) 
            throws SQLException {
        ArrayDescriptor ad = ArrayDescriptor.createDescriptor("SIT", c);
        ARRAY a = new ARRAY(ad, c, elems.toArray());
        OraclePreparedStatement ops 
           = (OraclePreparedStatement)c.prepareStatement(
                        "insert into si " +
                        " select *" +
                        "    from table(?)");
        ops.setARRAY(1, a);

        System.out.println(ops.executeUpdate());
        ops.close();
        c.commit();
    }

Prepared:

    private static void insertPrepared(Connection c, List elems) 
            throws SQLException {
        PreparedStatement ps = c.prepareStatement("insert into si values(?,?)");
        Iterator i = elems.iterator();
        while ( i.hasNext()) 
        {
            Object[] o = i.next();
            ps.setInt(1, (Integer)o[0]);
            ps.setInt(2, (Integer)o[1]);
            ps.executeUpdate();
        }
        ps.close();
        
        c.commit();
    }

Here are some timings for other number of rows. It shows that if you are inserting 100-1000 rows this approach might be worth considering. Measure yourself. Be sure to have enough memory available for your Java.

ms      localhost      remote db 
rows    prepared array prepared array
10      94       140   93       141
100     125      141   125      156
1000    313      203   844      265
10000   1500     344   16297    453
100000  12063    1422  206210   2078
1000000 182063   java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: Java heap space  

insertintoselect.java