Hi, I asked a question on DBA of StackExchange about MonetDB, but as there is not even a monetdb tag in use, maybe it wasn't the right forum for it. Please have a look over there, or I can repeat it below: http://dba.stackexchange.com/q/65126/38399 I am confused whether you can copy records into a *new* table in MonetDB. The official documentation seems[1] to talk only about copying into existing tables. I have quite a large universe of billions of records in dozens of tables, and I would much prefer a solution that inferred the type from the CSV itself, and the column names from the first rows. A StackOverflow answer[2] seems to work for SQL Server 2000 with `OpenRowset`, though even they are not concerned about data-type inferencing. Another answer[3] here on DBA recommends `BCP` before calling `BULK INSERT` in Server 2000, neither of which is discussed in the MonetDB documentation. Other answers[4] also suggest that this is impossible in MySQL without external scripts. The background of my issues are that I realized that managing my raw data (which came in text files from government agencies, with scarce documentation) should be separate from the front-end of my analysis still kept in Stata. This is similar to what has been achieved with MonetDB.R (e.g. hannes.muehleisen.org/SSDBM2013-databases-and-statistics.pdf), though probably limited to an odbc link (so missing some of the real benefits coming from merging and calculations done in MonetDB). That said, this is the only sign of a Stata and MonetDB link I could find: http://www.stata.com/statalist/archive/2012-08/msg01363.html Disclaimer: I am an SQL and MonetDB newbie, but thanks for not letting me miss the obvious. [1]: https://www.monetdb.org/Documentation/Manuals/SQLreference/CopyInto [2]: http://stackoverflow.com/a/10421034/938408 [3]: http://dba.stackexchange.com/a/22763/38399 [4]: http://dba.stackexchange.com/a/61969/38399