Is there a faster way than wp_insert_post to add content to a blog

I’ve written a plugin which retrieves an xml file, parses and creates a series of short posts from the content.

Although each post is very short (sometimes just a single sentence, never more than a few sentences), there are around 1000 posts to create from the file.

Using wp_insert_post takes enough time for this job to timeout giving a 500 status.

I also encounter similar problems when deactivating the plugin and trying to move the same content.

Are there any quicker ways of populating (or removing) posts?

You can access the database with an INSERT statement and add multiple rows at once.

Something like this pseudo-code:

INSERT INTO $wpdb->posts (
`post_author`, 
`post_date`, 
`post_date_gmt`, 
`post_content`, 
`post_title`, 
`post_status`, 
`post_name`, 
`post_modified`, 
`guid`, 
`post_type`, 
`post_mime_type`
) 
VALUES
    ( $user_id, $current_date,$current_date_gmt, $content1 ),
    ( $user_id, $current_date,$current_date_gmt, $content2 ),
    ( $user_id, $current_date,$current_date_gmt, $content3 )
;

Make sure to fill all the values that are set to NOT NULL and have no default value in the post table schema.
From wp-admin/includes/schema.php:

CREATE TABLE $wpdb->posts (
  ID bigint(20) unsigned NOT NULL auto_increment,
  post_author bigint(20) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
  post_date datetime NOT NULL default '0000-00-00 00:00:00',
  post_date_gmt datetime NOT NULL default '0000-00-00 00:00:00',
  post_content longtext NOT NULL,
  post_title text NOT NULL,
  post_excerpt text NOT NULL,
  post_status varchar(20) NOT NULL default 'publish',
  comment_status varchar(20) NOT NULL default 'open',
  ping_status varchar(20) NOT NULL default 'open',
  post_password varchar(20) NOT NULL default '',
  post_name varchar(200) NOT NULL default '',
  to_ping text NOT NULL,
  pinged text NOT NULL,
  post_modified datetime NOT NULL default '0000-00-00 00:00:00',
  post_modified_gmt datetime NOT NULL default '0000-00-00 00:00:00',
  post_content_filtered longtext NOT NULL,
  post_parent bigint(20) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
  guid varchar(255) NOT NULL default '',
  menu_order int(11) NOT NULL default '0',
  post_type varchar(20) NOT NULL default 'post',
  post_mime_type varchar(100) NOT NULL default '',
  comment_count bigint(20) NOT NULL default '0',
  PRIMARY KEY  (ID),
  KEY post_name (post_name),
  KEY type_status_date (post_type,post_status,post_date,ID),
  KEY post_parent (post_parent),
  KEY post_author (post_author)
) $charset_collate;\n";

Also, regular posts need a default category. Not sure what happens if you omit that.