Before you do the conversion, it's very important to validate your flat file data. Since MySQL often lacks many real database features (specifically, I'm thinking about foreign key support) and since flat files don't do much in the way of data type validation, you could easily wind up with some significant problems in trying to import the data into your database. Having bad datatypes, orphan records, and many other issues will significantly complicate this task.

Rather than just tell you about the problems, I'll offer a solution :) If you are using CSV files, or can easily convert to them, check out my CSV Database Validation program. This will allow you to create a schema for your database, validate foreign keys contrainst, unique fields, and even optionally specify regular expressions that every field must match. I've included full POD for the program and even a mini-tutorial.

Cheers,
Ovid

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