Each week I have to update a very large database. Currently I run a commit
about every 1000 queries. This vastly increased performance but I am
wondering if the performance can be increased further. I could send all of
the queries to a file but COPY doesn't support plain queries such as UPDATE,
so I don't think that is going to help. The only time I have to run a
commit is when I need to make a new table. The server has 4GB of memory and
fast everything else. The only postgresql.conf variable I have changed is
for the shared_memory.

Would sending all of the queries in a single query string increase
performance?

What is the optimal batch size for commits?

Are there any postgresql.conf variable that should be tweaked?

Anybody have any suggestions?