Question

Let’s say we get the following data from a CSV file:

account_number balance customer name
100            500.00  GERN BLANSTON
101            800.00  GERN BLANSTON
102            200.00  OPRAH WINFREY

This represents two accounts belonging to Gern Blanston and one belonging to Oprah Winfrey. Now let’s say we have a customer table and an account table. We could hypothetically insert the data using just two INSERT statements:

INSERT INTO customer
  (name)
VALUES
  ('GERN BLANSTON'),
  ('OPRAH WINFREY')

and

INSERT INTO account
  (account_number, balance, customer_id)
VALUES
  (100, 500.00, ???),
  (101, 800.00, ???),
  (102, 200.00, ???)

If we knew the IDs for Gern Blanston and Oprah Winfrey, we could of course use those IDs in the second INSERT statement and it would work fine. But one way or another, we need to get those IDs.

My question: is there a fast way to find out, or at least keep track of, the IDs of each inserted customer? Inserting each row individually and then getting LAST_INSERT_ID() is too slow for me (I have up to 65,000 accounts in each CSV file). Looking up the customer ID each time I insert a new account is also too slow.

Or, if you want to sidestep that particular question and recommend a different solution, I’m open to that as well. I’m using MySQL.

Answer 1

add another column for table account, which store customer_name, after complete the insertion, just update account set customer_id=(select customer.customer_id from customer where customer.customer_name=account.customer_name;

hope this alternative workaround simplify the complexity

also, change your customer table to have auto_increment for customer_id