vi is an editor so it doesn't really solve my requirement of getting spreadsheet-like editing capabilities. SQlite is a good idea, I never thought of that. I will investigate that and add it to the article. Thanks!
I use something like this to fix up column names and import:
sed -i '' -e '1 s/ \/ /_/g; 1 s/[() ]/_/g' $csv_file
sqlite3 $db_file <<SQL
.mode csv
.import $csv_file $table_name
SQL