Simon Fell > Its just code > Everything you wanted to know about loading lots of data into Salesforce but were afaid to ask

Lexi, infamous author of the AppExchange Data Loader (nee Sforce Data Loader, nee LexiLoader), wrote up the details of how to get the best performance when trying to load lots and lots of data into Salesforce via the API. This is when you really need to know what your soap toolkit is and isn't doing when it comes to HTTP.