Avoid inserts in autocommit mode if possible

Inserts can be painfully slow in autocommit mode because each commit involves an update of the log on the disk for each INSERT statement. The commit will not return until a physical disk write is executed. To speed things up:
Related concepts
Use prepared statements with substitution parameters
Create indexes, and make sure they are being used
Increase the size of the data page cache
Tune the size of database pages
Avoid expensive queries
Use the appropriate getXXX and setXXX methods for the type
Tune database booting/class loading
Customize the optimizer methods for table functions