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## django-fast-update ##
Faster db updates using `UPDATE FROM VALUES` sql variants.
### Installation & Usage ###
Run `pip install django-fast-update` and place `fast_update` in INSTALLED_APPS.
With attaching `FastUpdateManager` as a manager to your model, `fast_update`
can be used instead of `bulk_update`, e.g.:
```python
from django.db import models
from fast_update.query import FastUpdateManager
class MyModel(models.Model):
objects = FastUpdateManager()
field_a = ...
field_b = ...
field_c = ...
# to update multiple instances at once:
MyModel.objects.fast_update(bunch_of_instances, ['field_a', 'field_b', 'field_c'])
```
Alternatively `fast.fast_update` can be used directly with a queryset as first argument
(Warning - this skips most sanity checks with up to 30% speed gain,
so make sure not to feed something totally off).
### Compatibility ###
`fast_update` is known to work with these database versions:
- SQLite 3.15+
- PostgreSQL
- MariaDB 10.2+
- MySQL 5.7+
For unsupported database backends or outdated versions `fast_update` will fall back to `bulk_update`.
(It is possible to register fast update implementations for other db vendors with `register_implementation`.
See `fast_update/fast.py` for more details.)
Note that with `fast_update` f-expressions cannot be used anymore.
This is a design decision to not penalize update performance by some swiss-army-knife functionality.
If you have f-expressions in your update data, consider re-grouping the update steps and update those
fields with `update` or `bulk_update` instead.
Other than with `bulk_update` duplicates in a changeset are not allowed and will raise.
This is mainly a safety guard to not let slip through duplicates, where the final update state
would be undetermined or directly depend on the database's compatibility.
### copy_update ###
This is a PostgreSQL only update implementation based on `COPY FROM`. This runs even faster
than `fast_update` for medium to big changesets (but tends to be slower than `fast_update` for <100 objects).
`copy_update` follows the same interface idea as `bulk_update` and `fast_update`, minus a `batch_size`
argument (data is always transferred in one big batch). It can be used likewise from the `FastUpdateManager`.
`copy_update` also has no support for f-expressions, also duplicates will raise.
**Note** `copy_update` will probably never leave the alpha/PoC-state, as psycopg3 brings great COPY support,
which does a more secure value conversion and has a very fast C-version.
**Note** Django 4.2 brings psycopg3 support, which is currently not yet supported by `copy_update`.
While psycopg2 will keep working as before, psycopg3 will raise on attempts to use `copy_update` until #16 got resolved.
### Status ###
Currently beta, still some TODOs left.
The whole package is tested with Django 3.2 & 4.2 on Python 3.8 & 3.11.
### Performance ###
There is a management command in the example app testing performance of updates on the `FieldUpdate`
model (`./manage.py perf`).
`fast_update` is at least 8 times faster than `bulk_update`, and keeps making ground for bigger changesets.
This indicates different runtime complexity. `fast_update` grows almost linear for very big numbers of rows
(tested during some perf series against `copy_update` up to 10M), while `bulk_update` grows much faster
(looks quadratic to me, which can be lowered to linear by applying a proper `batch_size`,
but it stays very steep compared to `fast_update`).
For very big changesets `copy_update` is the clear winner, and even shows a substantial increase in updated rows/s
(within my test range, as upper estimate this of course cannot grow slower than linear,
as the data pumping will saturate to linear).