General

Use CREATE OBJECTS WITH OBJECT TYPE

In general, it is faster to use CREATE OBJECTS WITH OBJECT TYPE rather than CREATE OBJECT FROM MONADS. On my machine, it is between 7 and 10 times faster, depending on the backend.

One drawback of CREATE OBJECTS WITH OBJECT TYPE is that you can't get the object id_d back immediately. You would have to query the database (e.g., using SELECT OBJECTS HAVING MONADS IN) to find out the object id_ds of the newly created objects.

If your application requires complex interaction between objects, e.g., setting features based on other objects' id_ds, it may be easier (but certainly not faster) to use CREATE OBJECT FROM MONADS.

Drop indexes

In order to speed up queries, one thing you can do is to issue a

  $ manage_indices --drop databasename

command on the command-line before starting the program which populates the database. Then, once all creation has taken place, you can issue the command:

  $ manage_indices --create databasename

in order to recreate the indices. See the manage_indices(1) manual page for more information.

You can also use the MQL statements DROP INDEXES and CREATE INDEXES. See the MQL User's Guide for more information.