Why Loading ZINC Is So Slow: Difference between revisions
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again, it is better to build the indexes when the entire table is loaded rather than piece-by-piece | again, it is better to build the indexes when the entire table is loaded rather than piece-by-piece | ||
== c. improvement == | |||
after disabling the loading and resolution steps, and turning off indices, the time it took to load 2.34m molecules into ZINC went from | |||
12+ hours | |||
down to | |||
1 hour | |||
and the uniqueness of the molecules is still preserved |
Revision as of 18:06, 30 May 2020
/nfs/home/xyz/btingle/zinc_deploy/zincload-catalog.sh
the problem is with the "resolution" and "loading" steps of the catalog script. these steps ensure the uniqueness of molecules in the substance and catalog_substance table respectively
a. sorting & queries
in order to be sure that each molecule is unique, the database must effectively sort molecules as they come in- this is equivalent to a btree query+insert for each new molecule
THEORETICALLY this is fine, but practically it is not
when relatively few molecules are being added to the database this is fine, but for large inserts on a large database this becomes inefficient
there is a significant amount of overhead involved in each query, at least compared to the insert operation which is done in bulk
the solution is to ensure the uniqueness of each molecule *before* they are inserted into the database. this can be done by a sorting program like `sort -u`
it is better to load the entire dataset in memory and sort it manually beforehand than to let the database software figure it out as we gradually feed it the data
dropping the query operations allows us to make a further optimization... (see b)
b. indexes
there are a lot of indexes on the substance and catalog data
indexes tend to slow down insert operations significantly (https://use-the-index-luke.com/sql/dml/insert), for large operations this becomes intolerable
the solution is to "shut off" the indexes for the duration of the insert operation and rebuild them once it has completed
again, it is better to build the indexes when the entire table is loaded rather than piece-by-piece
c. improvement
after disabling the loading and resolution steps, and turning off indices, the time it took to load 2.34m molecules into ZINC went from
12+ hours
down to
1 hour
and the uniqueness of the molecules is still preserved