Database performance depends on the database being tuned. Some databases default to “developer setup” which does not use much of the RAM but is only for functional testing.
For a large bulk load into an existing store, dropping the indexes, doing the load and then recreating the indexes can be noticeably faster.
sdbconfig --drop
sdbload file
sdbconfig --index
For a large bulk load into a new store, just format it, and not create the indexes, do the load and then recreating the indexes can be noticeably faster.
sdbconfig --format
sdbload --time file
sdbconfig --index