How to insert 40000 records fast into an sqlite database in an iPad

There are three things that you need to do in order to speed up the insertions:

• Move the call of sqlite3_open outside the loop. Currently, the loop is not shown, so I assume it is outside your code snippet
• Add BEGIN TRANSACTION and COMMIT TRANSACTION calls – you need to begin transaction before the insertion loop and end it right after the loop is over.
• Make formatStringQueryInsertWithTable truly parameterized – Currently it appears that you are not using prepared statements to their fullest, because despite using sqlite3_prepare_v2, you have no calls of sqlite3_bind_XYZ in your code.

Here is a nice post that shows you how to do all of the above. It is plain C, but it will work fine as part of an Objective C program.

char* errorMessage;
sqlite3_exec(mDb, "BEGIN TRANSACTION", NULL, NULL, &errorMessage);
char buffer[] = "INSERT INTO example VALUES (?1, ?2, ?3, ?4, ?5, ?6, ?7)";
sqlite3_stmt* stmt;
sqlite3_prepare_v2(mDb, buffer, strlen(buffer), &stmt, NULL);
for (unsigned i = 0; i < mVal; i++) {
    std::string id = getID();
    sqlite3_bind_text(stmt, 1, id.c_str(), id.size(), SQLITE_STATIC);
    sqlite3_bind_double(stmt, 2, getDouble());
    sqlite3_bind_double(stmt, 3, getDouble());
    sqlite3_bind_double(stmt, 4, getDouble());
    sqlite3_bind_int(stmt, 5, getInt());
    sqlite3_bind_int(stmt, 6, getInt());
    sqlite3_bind_int(stmt, 7, getInt());
    if (sqlite3_step(stmt) != SQLITE_DONE) {
        printf("Commit Failed!\n");
    }
    sqlite3_reset(stmt);
}
sqlite3_exec(mDb, "COMMIT TRANSACTION", NULL, NULL, &errorMessage);
sqlite3_finalize(stmt);