<p>I have to read data from some files and insert the data into different tables in a database. Is Unix shell script powerful enough to do the job?</p>

<p>Is it easy to do the job in shell script or should I go about doing this in Java?</p>

Can't test it right now, but something like:
```
```
echo "INSERT INTO foo (b,a,r) VALUES (1,2,3);" | 
    mysql -u user -psecret -h host database
```
```
in a shell script should work. Don't know about getting Data out of it though