Experiences with PostgreSQL Java/JDBC Copy API for bulk inserts

With version 8.4 PostgreSQL finally integrated a proprietary API into their JDBC driver, which allows stream based inserts and selects. The so called Copy API grants access to COPY TO/COPY FROM SQL commands, which read text data from a stream/reader into one table at a time or write text data to a stream/writer from one table. Constraints and triggers are regarded 开发者_JAVA技巧for insert operations. Basic transformations (delimiter, quotation, null values etc.) are available. The performance gain is quite impressive, which probably is because of less object instantiation and a much simpler protocol between client and server backend.

Has anyone experiences with this API, good or bad. Is it production ready? Are there any pitfalls one has to be aware of? BTW: The fact that it is a proprietary API is a non-issue for me.

The COPY API is present in PostgreSQL C library for at least 6 years. It is very stable.

See: http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/interactive/libpq-copy.html and http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.0/interactive/sql-copy.html

JDBC implementation should have same properties, but I haven't used it.

PS. I think there is a misunderstanding when you call this "proprietary". Both protocol specification and server/client/driver source code is free (as in freedom).