I'm trying to bulk load a lot of data ( 5.5 million rows ) into an SQLite database file. Loading via INSERTs seems to be far too slow, so I'm trying to use the sqlite3 command line tool and the .import command. It works perfectly if I enter the commands by hand, but I can't for the life of me work out how to automate it from a script ( .bat file or python script; I'm working on a Windows machine )