> Perhaps you can give me a hint as to why inserts slow down.j
I didn't have time to check out 7.9, but I have done some testing with
8.0, and I didn't notice a real slow-down. This is Java testing script
(1 mio documents are added in just 17 seconds; I'm using the internal
BaseX parser to speed up the import):

    Performance p = new Performance();
    Context ctx = new Context();

    new CreateDB("db").execute(ctx);
    new Set(MainOptions.AUTOFLUSH, false).execute(ctx);
    new Set(MainOptions.INTPARSE, true).execute(ctx);
    for(int i = 0; i < 1000000; i++) {
      new Add("db", "<a/>").execute(ctx);
    }
    ctx.close();
    System.out.println(p);

Hope this helps,
Christian