Importing data that is contained in Comma Separated Values (CSV) files is a verymon database task. The CSV format is ideally suited to importing into a database because it stores tabular data in a format that can easily be mapped to a database table. In fact CSV is amon data exchange format that has gained wide-spread acceptance by consumer business and scientific applications. Its mostmon use is moving tabular data between programs whose native formats are largely ipatible. Importing Data Natively using LOAD DATA INFILE Some databases such as MySQL provide special statements specifically for importing CSV data. MySQL statement is LOAD DATA INFILE. LOAD DATA INFILE 'c' code INTO TABLE customers code FIELDS TERMINATED BY '' code ENCLOSED BY '' code LINES TERMINATED BY 'n' code IGNORE 1 ROWS; code The LOAD DATA INFILE statement is flexible enough to support a wide array of Delimiter-separated Values (DSV) formats. As such it allows you to denote what characters delimit fields and lines. You can see in the above example that each field is separated by ama (indicated by FIELD TERMINATED BY '') code and enclosed by double quotation marks (specified by ENCLOSED BY ' code ). Finally each line of the CSV file is terminated by a newline character as indicated by LINES TERMINATED BY 'n' code . If your CSV file contains column headings in the first line of the file you can ignore it by specifying the IGNORE 1 ROWS code option. Having a native means of importing CSV data offers some definite advantages The LOAD DATA INFILE statement is optimized to import data from a file into a database table very fast . While you do have to create the database and table(s) first you only need to do that once for each data set. Once youve created your table(s) you can import as many files as is necessary. Importing Data using a Utility For databases that no not provides a built-in way of importing CSV data your best bet is to use a third-party tool. Of course this will largely depend on your specific database product as most tools cater to one database vendor in particular. Some tools target multiple databases such as HeidiSQL. It supports MariaDB MySQL Microsoft SQL and PostgreSQL. An even more versatile tool is Navicat Premium s . It supports MySQL MariaDB MongoDB SQL Server Oracle PostgreSQL and SQLite. It alsopatible with cloud databases like Amazon RDS Amazon Aurora Amazon Redshift Microsoft Azure Oracle Cloud Google Cloud and MongoDB Atlas. Moreover it is the only product that I am aware of that can connect to all of these simultaneously. So in addition to being able to import from a file it can transfer data directly from one DBMS to another. The Import Wizard supports just about any format that you can imagine. In addition to CSV it can process Excel HTML XML JSON and many more formats There is a screen for choosing the record delimiter field delimiter and qualifier Navicat shows you the progress in real time Once your done you can save all your settings for later use. I have used the Import and Export utilities many times and have been quite impressed by both. Best regards! Adam