CsvSQL enables you to access a CSV file as if it were a table in a database. This means you can use SQL queries, with each "Common Seperated Value" as part of a column. Traditionally in order to access specific information from a CSV file it can take considerable use of regular expressions, awk, or sed. What if you only wanted to take out a handful of lines from a large file? It nearly becomes easier to do it manually than to figure out the expressions needed otherwise.
CsvSQL has a simple to use console based interface, similar to that of PostgreSQL or MySQL, with which the user enters SQL commands to manipulate CSV files. Currently Version 0.2-0 can use the SQL commands SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, and a slightly altered version of CREATE, along with several non- SQL commands.
Using CsvSQL a user can select particular sections of CSV files based on a number of requirements. For instance if the user had a file containing the data of all users logged onto a system, along with what times they logged on at, and what programs they were running; the user could specify to view all users logged on before 7 o'clock, who were running a Bash shell (which is a type of linux terminal) or a Csh (a C shell). The user could output this data to a separate file if desired, and continue selecting different records appending them all to a separate file.
It is also possible for a user to manipulate the data in a file. If, for instance an IMAP Administrator needs to find all users who are within 50M of a 400M storage limit, and increase their limit by 200M. CsvSQL can be used to update all users whose current use is greater than 350M and whose storage limit is 400M to the new value of 600M.
There are many applications for CsvSQL in a business environment for managing CSV files. These files are regularly used in many IT Departments around the world, and are the preferred choice for exporting and importing data from one system to another. An example of which is Google's "Google Apps" email service. This service uses CSV files to create bulk email accounts at a time. CSV's are even used on a smaller scale with mail clients using them for exporting address books.