Oracle has a feature called external tables that lets you map regular files to the database and run SQL against them. Works with csv or any format that can be loaded to the database with the normal database loading utilities. This is very useful for getting transformation and loading done in one step!
The feature actually uses the syntax from the old SQLLDR tool, and can also specify fields in absolute columnar position as well as defining delimiters (reminiscent of gawk). There are also conditionals (when), rounding rules, and other transformations.
