I need some advice on the best way to load data to a table while
maintaining an index. I have a table that is very small at the moment
but will have more than 70 million rows by the end of the year. Data
is added to it several times a day, parsed from a text file. I'd like
to create an index on the table now, when it is small, and maintain it
as the table grows. What is the fastest way to both load the data and
maintain the index? Should I drop the index, load the data and then
reindex? Is there any benefit to loading the data to a temporary file,
indexing that file and then inserting the data into the master table
which is indexed on the same field? Sorry if this is a really newbie
question but I'd appreciate any advice you can give.