Database input speed question

[jjhorner]

All,

I've got large amounts of data that I need to put into a database (a few 10M records).

My question is this:

If I connect to the database, cycle through each line and execute the SQL to add the line to the database, it takes a while to insert into the database across Unix sockets. What ways can I speed up the insertion so that I can batch most of it? It is conceivable that I can do one mass SQL string with multiple inserts at once? Will I gain any speed that way? Example:

my $SQL = "blah\;";
$SQL .= "blah\;";
$SQL .= "blah\;";

Or should I do it normally:

my $SQL = "blah";
<insert DBI code to execute here>

Any advice will be helpful...

J. J. Horner 
CISSP,CCNA,CHSS,CHP,blah,blah,blah