# Data Ingestion Methods & Tools

ColumnStore provides several mechanisms to ingest data:

* [cpimport](/docs/analytics/mariadb-columnstore/clients-and-tools/data-ingestion/columnstore-bulk-data-loading.md) provides the fastest performance for inserting data and ability to route data to particular PrimProc nodes. Normally, this should be the default choice for loading data .
* [LOAD DATA INFILE](/docs/analytics/mariadb-columnstore/reference/data-manipulation-statements/columnstore-load-data-infile.md) provides another means of bulk inserting data.
  * By default, with autocommit on, it internally streams the data to an instance of the `cpimport` process.
  * In transactional mode, DML inserts are performed, which is significantly slower and also consumes both binlog transaction files and ColumnStore VersionBuffer files.
* DML, i.e. `INSERT`, `UPDATE`, and `DELETE`, provide row-level changes. ColumnStore is optimized towards bulk modifications, so these operations are slower than they would be in, for instance, InnoDB.
  * Currently ColumnStore does not support operating as a replication replica target.
  * Bulk DML operations will in general perform better than multiple individual statements.
    * [INSERT INTO SELECT](/docs/analytics/mariadb-columnstore/clients-and-tools/data-ingestion/columnstore-batch-insert-mode.md) with autocommit behaves similarly to `LOAD DATE INFILE` because, internally, it is mapped to `cpimport` for higher performance.
    * Bulk update operations based on a join with a small staging table can be relatively fast, especially if updating a single column.
* Using ColumnStore Bulk Write SDK or [ColumnStore Streaming Data Adapters](/docs/analytics/mariadb-columnstore/clients-and-tools/data-ingestion/columnstore-streaming-data-adapters.md).

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