[firebird-support] Bulk upload options

[fabia...@itbizolutions.com.au [firebird-support]]

I am looking for the fastest way to run a bulk insert. 
 I believe one way would be using isql.exe , I need to plan a solution to 
upload into a single table around 500 million records. Does anyone have 
experience with bulk updates via isql? Would it be X times faster than using a 
normal application inserting the records inside a begin transaction and commit 
at the end?
 The issue is I have a remote database (not a FB database) and my options are 
reading the remote DB and writing into FB one record at the time with a loop, 
or asking the remote DB to dump the table into a txt file, then compressing the 
file with winrar or whatever compression, and then using that file to execute a 
bulk upload to FB," This is an ongoing issue, is not a one of, so I am trying 
to design the best performing solution, not a one of trick.
 I know the volume of data will be around 250 Gb per run, hence that could be 
compressed at the server non-FB and sent to the FB server via internet, the 
compressed size would be probably just 5% of the uncompressed size as it is all 
text, so we are talking about 12 Gb aprox, the only question is "would then 
uploading the txt file into a table  be quicker than a line by line insert into 
table?