Using Bulk Insert dramatically slows down processing? - oracle

Question

I'm fairly new to Oracle but I have used the Bulk insert on a couple other applications. Most seem to go faster using it but I've had a couple where it slows down the application. This is my second one where it slowed it down significantly so I'm wondering if I have something setup incorrectly or maybe I need to set it up differently. In this case I have a console application that processed ~1,900 records. Inserting them individually it will take ~2.5 hours and when I switched over to the Bulk insert it jumped to 5 hours.
The article I based this off of is http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/issue-archive/2009/09-sep/o59odpnet-085168.html
Here is what I'm doing, I'm retrieving some records from the DB, do calculations, and then write the results out to a text file. After the calculations are done I have to write those results back to a different table in the DB so we can look back at what those calculations later on if needed.
When I make the calculation I add the results to a List. Once I'm done writing out the file I look at that List and if there are any records I do the bulk insert.
With the bulk insert I have a setting in the App.config to set the number of records I want to insert. In this case I'm using 250 records. I assumed it would be better to limit my in memory arrays to say 250 records versus the 1,900. I loop through that list to the count in the App.config and create an array for each column. Those arrays are then passed as parameters to Oracle.
App.config
<add key="UpdateBatchCount" value="250" />
Class
class EligibleHours
{
public string EmployeeID { get; set; }
public decimal Hours { get; set; }
public string HoursSource { get; set; }
}
Data Manager
public static void SaveEligibleHours(List<EligibleHours> listHours)
{
//set the number of records to update batch on from config file Subtract one because of 0 based index
int batchCount = int.Parse(ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["UpdateBatchCount"]);
//create the arrays to add values to
string[] arrEmployeeId = new string[batchCount];
decimal[] arrHours = new decimal[batchCount];
string[] arrHoursSource = new string[batchCount];
int i = 0;
foreach (var item in listHours)
{
//Create an array of employee numbers that will be used for a batch update.
//update after every X amount of records, update. Add 1 to i to compensated for 0 based indexing.
if (i + 1 <= batchCount)
{
arrEmployeeId[i] = item.EmployeeID;
arrHours[i] = item.Hours;
arrHoursSource[i] = item.HoursSource;
i++;
}
else
{
UpdateDbWithEligibleHours(arrEmployeeId, arrHours, arrHoursSource);
//reset counter and array
i = 0;
arrEmployeeId = new string[batchCount];
arrHours = new decimal[batchCount];
arrHoursSource = new string[batchCount];
}
}
//process last array
if (arrEmployeeId.Length > 0)
{
UpdateDbWithEligibleHours(arrEmployeeId, arrHours, arrHoursSource);
}
}
private static void UpdateDbWithEligibleHours(string[] arrEmployeeId, decimal[] arrHours, string[] arrHoursSource)
{
StringBuilder sbQuery = new StringBuilder();
sbQuery.Append("insert into ELIGIBLE_HOURS ");
sbQuery.Append("(EMP_ID, HOURS_SOURCE, TOT_ELIG_HRS, REPORT_DATE) ");
sbQuery.Append("values ");
sbQuery.Append("(:1, :2, :3, SYSDATE) ");
string connectionString = ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["Server_Connection"].ToString();
using (OracleConnection dbConn = new OracleConnection(connectionString))
{
dbConn.Open();
//create Oracle parameters and pass arrays of data
OracleParameter p_employee_id = new OracleParameter();
p_employee_id.OracleDbType = OracleDbType.Char;
p_employee_id.Value = arrEmployeeId;
OracleParameter p_hoursSource = new OracleParameter();
p_hoursSource.OracleDbType = OracleDbType.Char;
p_hoursSource.Value = arrHoursSource;
OracleParameter p_hours = new OracleParameter();
p_hours.OracleDbType = OracleDbType.Decimal;
p_hours.Value = arrHours;
OracleCommand objCmd = dbConn.CreateCommand();
objCmd.CommandText = sbQuery.ToString();
objCmd.ArrayBindCount = arrEmployeeId.Length;
objCmd.Parameters.Add(p_employee_id);
objCmd.Parameters.Add(p_hoursSource);
objCmd.Parameters.Add(p_hours);
objCmd.ExecuteNonQuery();
}
}