Optimizing SQLite is tricky. Bulk-insert performance of a C application can vary from 85 inserts per second to over 96,000 inserts per second!
Background: We are using SQLite as part of a desktop application. We have large amounts of configuration data stored in XML files that are parsed and loaded into an SQLite database for further processing when the application is initialized. SQLite is ideal for this situation because it's fast, it requires no specialized configuration, and the database is stored on disk as a single file.
Rationale: Initially I was disappointed with the performance I was seeing. It turns-out that the performance of SQLite can vary significantly (both for bulk-inserts and selects) depending on how the database is configured and how you're using the API. It was not a trivial matter to figure out what all of the options and techniques were, so I thought it prudent to create this community wiki entry to share the results with Stack Overflow readers in order to save others the trouble of the same investigations.
The Experiment: Rather than simply talking about performance tips in the general sense (i.e. "Use a transaction!"), I thought it best to write some C code and actually measure the impact of various options. We're going to start with some simple data:
Let's write some code!
The Code: A simple C program that reads the text file line-by-line, splits the string into values and then inserts the data into an SQLite database. In this "baseline" version of the code, the database is created, but we won't actually insert data:
/*************************************************************
Baseline code to experiment with SQLite performance.
Input data is a 28 MB TAB-delimited text file of the
complete Toronto Transit System schedule/route info
from http://www.toronto.ca/open/datasets/ttc-routes/
**************************************************************/
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <time.h>
#include <string.h>
#include "sqlite3.h"
#define INPUTDATA "C:\\TTC_schedule_scheduleitem_10-27-2009.txt"
#define DATABASE "c:\\TTC_schedule_scheduleitem_10-27-2009.sqlite"
#define TABLE "CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS TTC (id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, Route_ID TEXT, Branch_Code TEXT, Version INTEGER, Stop INTEGER, Vehicle_Index INTEGER, Day Integer, Time TEXT)"
#define BUFFER_SIZE 256
int main(int argc, char **argv) {
sqlite3 * db;
sqlite3_stmt * stmt;
char * sErrMsg = 0;
char * tail = 0;
int nRetCode;
int n = 0;
clock_t cStartClock;
FILE * pFile;
char sInputBuf [BUFFER_SIZE] = "\0";
char * sRT = 0; /* Route */
char * sBR = 0; /* Branch */
char * sVR = 0; /* Version */
char * sST = 0; /* Stop Number */
char * sVI = 0; /* Vehicle */
char * sDT = 0; /* Date */
char * sTM = 0; /* Time */
char sSQL [BUFFER_SIZE] = "\0";
/*********************************************/
/* Open the Database and create the Schema */
sqlite3_open(DATABASE, &db);
sqlite3_exec(db, TABLE, NULL, NULL, &sErrMsg);
/*********************************************/
/* Open input file and import into Database*/
cStartClock = clock();
pFile = fopen (INPUTDATA,"r");
while (!feof(pFile)) {
fgets (sInputBuf, BUFFER_SIZE, pFile);
sRT = strtok (sInputBuf, "\t"); /* Get Route */
sBR = strtok (NULL, "\t"); /* Get Branch */
sVR = strtok (NULL, "\t"); /* Get Version */
sST = strtok (NULL, "\t"); /* Get Stop Number */
sVI = strtok (NULL, "\t"); /* Get Vehicle */
sDT = strtok (NULL, "\t"); /* Get Date */
sTM = strtok (NULL, "\t"); /* Get Time */
/* ACTUAL INSERT WILL GO HERE */
n++;
}
fclose (pFile);
printf("Imported %d records in %4.2f seconds\n", n, (clock() - cStartClock) / (double)CLOCKS_PER_SEC);
sqlite3_close(db);
return 0;
}
Running the code as-is doesn't actually perform any database operations, but it will give us an idea of how fast the raw C file I/O and string processing operations are.
Imported 864913 records in 0.94 seconds
Great! We can do 920,000 inserts per second, provided we don't actually do any inserts :-)
We're going to generate the SQL string using the values read from the file and invoke that SQL operation using sqlite3_exec:
sprintf(sSQL, "INSERT INTO TTC VALUES (NULL, '%s', '%s', '%s', '%s', '%s', '%s', '%s')", sRT, sBR, sVR, sST, sVI, sDT, sTM);
sqlite3_exec(db, sSQL, NULL, NULL, &sErrMsg);
This is going to be slow because the SQL will be compiled into VDBE code for every insert and every insert will happen in its own transaction. How slow?
Imported 864913 records in 9933.61 seconds
Yikes! 2 hours and 45 minutes! That's only 85 inserts per second.
By default, SQLite will evaluate every INSERT / UPDATE statement within a unique transaction. If performing a large number of inserts, it's advisable to wrap your operation in a transaction:
sqlite3_exec(db, "BEGIN TRANSACTION", NULL, NULL, &sErrMsg);
pFile = fopen (INPUTDATA,"r");
while (!feof(pFile)) {
...
}
fclose (pFile);
sqlite3_exec(db, "END TRANSACTION", NULL, NULL, &sErrMsg);
Imported 864913 records in 38.03 seconds
That's better. Simply wrapping all of our inserts in a single transaction improved our performance to 23,000 inserts per second.
Using a transaction was a huge improvement, but recompiling the SQL statement for every insert doesn't make sense if we using the same SQL over-and-over. Let's use sqlite3_prepare_v2
to compile our SQL statement once and then bind our parameters to that statement using sqlite3_bind_text
:
/* Open input file and import into the database */
cStartClock = clock();
sprintf(sSQL, "INSERT INTO TTC VALUES (NULL, @RT, @BR, @VR, @ST, @VI, @DT, @TM)");
sqlite3_prepare_v2(db, sSQL, BUFFER_SIZE, &stmt, &tail);
sqlite3_exec(db, "BEGIN TRANSACTION", NULL, NULL, &sErrMsg);
pFile = fopen (INPUTDATA,"r");
while (!feof(pFile)) {
fgets (sInputBuf, BUFFER_SIZE, pFile);
sRT = strtok (sInputBuf, "\t"); /* Get Route */
sBR = strtok (NULL, "\t"); /* Get Branch */
sVR = strtok (NULL, "\t"); /* Get Version */
sST = strtok (NULL, "\t"); /* Get Stop Number */
sVI = strtok (NULL, "\t"); /* Get Vehicle */
sDT = strtok (NULL, "\t"); /* Get Date */
sTM = strtok (NULL, "\t"); /* Get Time */
sqlite3_bind_text(stmt, 1, sRT, -1, SQLITE_TRANSIENT);
sqlite3_bind_text(stmt, 2, sBR, -1, SQLITE_TRANSIENT);
sqlite3_bind_text(stmt, 3, sVR, -1, SQLITE_TRANSIENT);
sqlite3_bind_text(stmt, 4, sST, -1, SQLITE_TRANSIENT);
sqlite3_bind_text(stmt, 5, sVI, -1, SQLITE_TRANSIENT);
sqlite3_bind_text(stmt, 6, sDT, -1, SQLITE_TRANSIENT);
sqlite3_bind_text(stmt, 7, sTM, -1, SQLITE_TRANSIENT);
sqlite3_step(stmt);
sqlite3_clear_bindings(stmt);
sqlite3_reset(stmt);
n++;
}
fclose (pFile);
sqlite3_exec(db, "END TRANSACTION", NULL, NULL, &sErrMsg);
printf("Imported %d records in %4.2f seconds\n", n, (clock() - cStartClock) / (double)CLOCKS_PER_SEC);
sqlite3_finalize(stmt);
sqlite3_close(db);
return 0;
Imported 864913 records in 16.27 seconds
Nice! There's a little bit more code (don't forget to call sqlite3_clear_bindings
and sqlite3_reset
), but we've more than doubled our performance to 53,000 inserts per second.
By default, SQLite will pause after issuing a OS-level write command. This guarantees that the data is written to the disk. By setting synchronous = OFF
, we are instructing SQLite to simply hand-off the data to the OS for writing and then continue. There's a chance that the database file may become corrupted if the computer suffers a catastrophic crash (or power failure) before the data is written to the platter:
/* Open the database and create the schema */
sqlite3_open(DATABASE, &db);
sqlite3_exec(db, TABLE, NULL, NULL, &sErrMsg);
sqlite3_exec(db, "PRAGMA synchronous = OFF", NULL, NULL, &sErrMsg);
Imported 864913 records in 12.41 seconds
The improvements are now smaller, but we're up to 69,600 inserts per second.
Consider storing the rollback journal in memory by evaluating PRAGMA journal_mode = MEMORY
. Your transaction will be faster, but if you lose power or your program crashes during a transaction you database could be left in a corrupt state with a partially-completed transaction:
/* Open the database and create the schema */
sqlite3_open(DATABASE, &db);
sqlite3_exec(db, TABLE, NULL, NULL, &sErrMsg);
sqlite3_exec(db, "PRAGMA journal_mode = MEMORY", NULL, NULL, &sErrMsg);
Imported 864913 records in 13.50 seconds
A little slower than the previous optimization at 64,000 inserts per second.
Let's combine the previous two optimizations. It's a little more risky (in case of a crash), but we're just importing data (not running a bank):
/* Open the database and create the schema */
sqlite3_open(DATABASE, &db);
sqlite3_exec(db, TABLE, NULL, NULL, &sErrMsg);
sqlite3_exec(db, "PRAGMA synchronous = OFF", NULL, NULL, &sErrMsg);
sqlite3_exec(db, "PRAGMA journal_mode = MEMORY", NULL, NULL, &sErrMsg);
Imported 864913 records in 12.00 seconds
Fantastic! We're able to do 72,000 inserts per second.
Just for kicks, let's build upon all of the previous optimizations and redefine the database filename so we're working entirely in RAM:
#define DATABASE ":memory:"
Imported 864913 records in 10.94 seconds
It's not super-practical to store our database in RAM, but it's impressive that we can perform 79,000 inserts per second.
Although not specifically an SQLite improvement, I don't like the extra char*
assignment operations in the while
loop. Let's quickly refactor that code to pass the output of strtok()
directly into sqlite3_bind_text()
, and let the compiler try to speed things up for us:
pFile = fopen (INPUTDATA,"r");
while (!feof(pFile)) {
fgets (sInputBuf, BUFFER_SIZE, pFile);
sqlite3_bind_text(stmt, 1, strtok (sInputBuf, "\t"), -1, SQLITE_TRANSIENT); /* Get Route */
sqlite3_bind_text(stmt, 2, strtok (NULL, "\t"), -1, SQLITE_TRANSIENT); /* Get Branch */
sqlite3_bind_text(stmt, 3, strtok (NULL, "\t"), -1, SQLITE_TRANSIENT); /* Get Version */
sqlite3_bind_text(stmt, 4, strtok (NULL, "\t"), -1, SQLITE_TRANSIENT); /* Get Stop Number */
sqlite3_bind_text(stmt, 5, strtok (NULL, "\t"), -1, SQLITE_TRANSIENT); /* Get Vehicle */
sqlite3_bind_text(stmt, 6, strtok (NULL, "\t"), -1, SQLITE_TRANSIENT); /* Get Date */
sqlite3_bind_text(stmt, 7, strtok (NULL, "\t"), -1, SQLITE_TRANSIENT); /* Get Time */
sqlite3_step(stmt); /* Execute the SQL Statement */
sqlite3_clear_bindings(stmt); /* Clear bindings */
sqlite3_reset(stmt); /* Reset VDBE */
n++;
}
fclose (pFile);
Note: We are back to using a real database file. In-memory databases are fast, but not necessarily practical
Imported 864913 records in 8.94 seconds
A slight refactoring to the string processing code used in our parameter binding has allowed us to perform 96,700 inserts per second. I think it's safe to say that this is plenty fast. As we start to tweak other variables (i.e. page size, index creation, etc.) this will be our benchmark.
I hope you're still with me! The reason we started down this road is that bulk-insert performance varies so wildly with SQLite, and it's not always obvious what changes need to be made to speed-up our operation. Using the same compiler (and compiler options), the same version of SQLite and the same data we've optimized our code and our usage of SQLite to go from a worst-case scenario of 85 inserts per second to over 96,000 inserts per second!
Before we start measuring SELECT
performance, we know that we'll be creating indices. It's been suggested in one of the answers below that when doing bulk inserts, it is faster to create the index after the data has been inserted (as opposed to creating the index first then inserting the data). Let's try:
Create Index then Insert Data
sqlite3_exec(db, "CREATE INDEX 'TTC_Stop_Index' ON 'TTC' ('Stop')", NULL, NULL, &sErrMsg);
sqlite3_exec(db, "BEGIN TRANSACTION", NULL, NULL, &sErrMsg);
...
Imported 864913 records in 18.13 seconds
Insert Data then Create Index
...
sqlite3_exec(db, "END TRANSACTION", NULL, NULL, &sErrMsg);
sqlite3_exec(db, "CREATE INDEX 'TTC_Stop_Index' ON 'TTC' ('Stop')", NULL, NULL, &sErrMsg);
Imported 864913 records in 13.66 seconds
As expected, bulk-inserts are slower if one column is indexed, but it does make a difference if the index is created after the data is inserted. Our no-index baseline is 96,000 inserts per second. Creating the index first then inserting data gives us 47,700 inserts per second, whereas inserting the data first then creating the index gives us 63,300 inserts per second.
I'd gladly take suggestions for other scenarios to try... And will be compiling similar data for SELECT queries soon.
sqlite3_clear_bindings(stmt);
? You set the bindings every time through which should be enough: Prior to calling sqlite3_step() for the first time or immediately after sqlite3_reset(), the application can invoke one of the sqlite3_bind() interfaces to attach values to the parameters. Each call to sqlite3_bind() overrides prior bindings on the same parameter (see: sqlite.org/cintro.html). There is nothing in the docs for that function saying you must call it. - anyone feof()
to control the termination of your input loop. Use the result returned by fgets()
. stackoverflow.com/a/15485689/827263 - anyone Several tips:
pragma journal_mode
). There is NORMAL
, and then there is OFF
, which can significantly increase insert speed if you're not too worried about the database possibly getting corrupted if the OS crashes. If your application crashes the data should be fine. Note that in newer versions, the OFF/MEMORY
settings are not safe for application level crashes.PRAGMA page_size
). Having larger page sizes can make reads and writes go a bit faster as larger pages are held in memory. Note that more memory will be used for your database.CREATE INDEX
after doing all your inserts. This is significantly faster than creating the index and then doing your inserts.INTEGER PRIMARY KEY
if possible, which will replace the implied unique row number column in the table.!feof(file)
!Answered 2023-09-20 20:17:54
synchronous = NORMAL
? sqlite.org/pragma.html#pragma_synchronous - anyone Try using SQLITE_STATIC
instead of SQLITE_TRANSIENT
for those inserts.
SQLITE_TRANSIENT
will cause SQLite to copy the string data before returning.
SQLITE_STATIC
tells it that the memory address you gave it will be valid until the query has been performed (which in this loop is always the case). This will save you several allocate, copy and deallocate operations per loop. Possibly a large improvement.
Answered 2023-09-20 20:17:54
Avoid sqlite3_clear_bindings(stmt)
.
The code in the test sets the bindings every time through which should be enough.
The C API intro from the SQLite docs says:
Prior to calling sqlite3_step() for the first time or immediately after sqlite3_reset(), the application can invoke the sqlite3_bind() interfaces to attach values to the parameters. Each call to sqlite3_bind() overrides prior bindings on the same parameter
There is nothing in the docs for sqlite3_clear_bindings
saying you must call it in addition to simply setting the bindings.
More detail: Avoid_sqlite3_clear_bindings()
Answered 2023-09-20 20:17:54
Inspired by this post and by the Stack Overflow question that led me here -- Is it possible to insert multiple rows at a time in an SQLite database? -- I've posted my first Git repository:
https://github.com/rdpoor/CreateOrUpdate
which bulk loads an array of ActiveRecords into MySQL, SQLite or PostgreSQL databases. It includes an option to ignore existing records, overwrite them or raise an error. My rudimentary benchmarks show a 10x speed improvement compared to sequential writes -- YMMV.
I'm using it in production code where I frequently need to import large datasets, and I'm pretty happy with it.
Answered 2023-09-20 20:17:54
Bulk imports seems to perform best if you can chunk your INSERT/UPDATE statements. A value of 10,000 or so has worked well for me on a table with only a few rows, YMMV...
Answered 2023-09-20 20:17:54
If you care only about reading, somewhat faster (but might read stale data) version is to read from multiple connections from multiple threads (connection per-thread).
First find the items, in the table:
SELECT COUNT(*) FROM table
then read in pages (LIMIT/OFFSET):
SELECT * FROM table ORDER BY _ROWID_ LIMIT <limit> OFFSET <offset>
where and are calculated per-thread, like this:
int limit = (count + n_threads - 1)/n_threads;
for each thread:
int offset = thread_index * limit
For our small (200mb) db this made 50-75% speed-up (3.8.0.2 64-bit on Windows 7). Our tables are heavily non-normalized (1000-1500 columns, roughly 100,000 or more rows).
Too many or too little threads won't do it, you need to benchmark and profile yourself.
Also for us, SHAREDCACHE made the performance slower, so I manually put PRIVATECACHE (cause it was enabled globally for us)
Answered 2023-09-20 20:17:54
I coudn't get any gain from transactions until I raised cache_size to a higher value i.e. PRAGMA cache_size=10000;
Answered 2023-09-20 20:17:54
cache_size
sets the number of pages to cache, not the total RAM size. With the default page size of 4kB, this setting will hold up to 40MB of data per open file (or per process, if running with shared cache). - anyone After reading this tutorial, I tried to implement it to my program.
I have 4-5 files that contain addresses. Each file has approx 30 million records. I am using the same configuration that you are suggesting but my number of INSERTs per second is way low (~10.000 records per sec).
Here is where your suggestion fails. You use a single transaction for all the records and a single insert with no errors/fails. Let's say that you are splitting each record into multiple inserts on different tables. What happens if the record is broken?
The ON CONFLICT command does not apply, cause if you have 10 elements in a record and you need each element inserted to a different table, if element 5 gets a CONSTRAINT error, then all previous 4 inserts need to go too.
So here is where the rollback comes. The only issue with the rollback is that you lose all your inserts and start from the top. How can you solve this?
My solution was to use multiple transactions. I begin and end a transaction every 10.000 records (Don't ask why that number, it was the fastest one I tested). I created an array sized 10.000 and insert the successful records there. When the error occurs, I do a rollback, begin a transaction, insert the records from my array, commit and then begin a new transaction after the broken record.
This solution helped me bypass the issues I have when dealing with files containing bad/duplicate records (I had almost 4% bad records).
The algorithm I created helped me reduce my process by 2 hours. Final loading process of file 1hr 30m which is still slow but not compared to the 4hrs that it initially took. I managed to speed the inserts from 10.000/s to ~14.000/s
If anyone has any other ideas on how to speed it up, I am open to suggestions.
UPDATE:
In Addition to my answer above, you should keep in mind that inserts per second depending on the hard drive you are using too. I tested it on 3 different PCs with different hard drives and got massive differences in times. PC1 (1hr 30m), PC2 (6hrs) PC3 (14hrs), so I started wondering why would that be.
After two weeks of research and checking multiple resources: Hard Drive, Ram, Cache, I found out that some settings on your hard drive can affect the I/O rate. By clicking properties on your desired output drive you can see two options in the general tab. Opt1: Compress this drive, Opt2: Allow files of this drive to have contents indexed.
By disabling these two options all 3 PCs now take approximately the same time to finish (1hr and 20 to 40min). If you encounter slow inserts check whether your hard drive is configured with these options. It will save you lots of time and headaches trying to find the solution
Answered 2023-09-20 20:17:54
The answer to your question is that the newer SQLite 3 has improved performance, use that.
This answer Why is SQLAlchemy insert with sqlite 25 times slower than using sqlite3 directly? by SqlAlchemy Orm Author has 100k inserts in 0.5 sec, and I have seen similar results with python-sqlite and SqlAlchemy. Which leads me to believe that performance has improved with SQLite 3.
Answered 2023-09-20 20:17:54
Splitting up the task into multiple transactions like @Jimmy_A did is the way to go. Otherwise, you may saturate your RAM with a monster transaction and a heavy COMMIT task.
For further performance tuning, you also may enable write-back cache on your hard drive given you use a somehow battery backed system (laptop, UPS, RAID controller with battery...).
Answered 2023-09-20 20:17:54
Using PRAGMA journal_mode = WAL
doubled the speed of INSERT
s in my case since internally it is the same as batching INSERTS as suggested here.
In my case I needed to import data into an index and not just a table. SQLite has this awesome feature of WITHOUT ROWID which allows to combine a table and index. By default, a table in SQLite is also a B-Tree and any indexes are stored in separate B-Tree pages. Using WITHOUT ROWID uses just one B-Tree for the table and index.
I also used PRAGMA auto_vacuum = 0
as technically it should prevent SQLite from improving space utilisation at the expense of database size, but it does not seem to make any visible difference in performance.
Although my case is a bit different from OP's requirement, the first suggestion of using WAL should make a difference for his case.
Answered 2023-09-20 20:17:54
Use ContentProvider for inserting the bulk data in db. The below method used for inserting bulk data in to database. This should Improve INSERT-per-second performance of SQLite.
private SQLiteDatabase database;
database = dbHelper.getWritableDatabase();
public int bulkInsert(@NonNull Uri uri, @NonNull ContentValues[] values) {
database.beginTransaction();
for (ContentValues value : values)
db.insert("TABLE_NAME", null, value);
database.setTransactionSuccessful();
database.endTransaction();
}
Call bulkInsert method :
App.getAppContext().getContentResolver().bulkInsert(contentUriTable,
contentValuesArray);
Link: https://www.vogella.com/tutorials/AndroidSQLite/article.html check Using ContentProvider Section for more details
Answered 2023-09-20 20:17:54
bulkInsert
, and they are not actually notably faster than just calling insert
in a loop :( - anyone