dbload - performance

Pholks, I'm having a little trouble with one of my favourite utilities - dbload. Namely it is too slow. In the past this has not been an issue - but in a warehousing world where you need to load massive amounts of data on a daily basis it has become an issue. In my development environment a dbload of a simple 25MB file is taking 16-19 minutes. Granted that the engine is a puny little thing and nothing has been optimized, but a 'LOAD FROM INSERT INTO' takes 7-8 minutes, and a cow orker is currently working on an esql/c program to duplicate the functionality and see if its any faster. The problem is that I really like the ability to talk to my load utility in a simplified language to tell it how to parse a fixed length file and have no desire to trust and support code to pre-parse a file (for a LOAD statement) or parse on the fly. IMHO code to support a DBLOAD statement is a lot simpler - both to write and maintain. Options I have considered revolve around a parallel load: split the incoming file run multiple copies of dbload against the same file, AND against the multiple files I will be receiving. Don't current versions of Online (7.0+) have a parallel load? My question is therefore - does anyone have thoughts on optimizing dbload or should I not expend effort in that direction and rely on a 7.0+ parallel load? Does the parallel load rely solely on multiple processors or will it still work with a single one? Since I'm lazy and not very reliable when it comes to summing up a discussion, could we keep this one public? cheers j. _____________________________________________________________________________ Jack Parker - Hewlett Packard, BSMC Boise, Idaho, USA jparker@hpbs3645.boi.hp.com _____________________________________________________________________________ It ain't over till the digestively challenged lady sings. _____________________________________________________________________________ Any opinions expressed herein are my own and not those of my employers. _____________________________________________________________________________