type recognition with MonetDB, *create* tables from CSVs
Indeed, the COPY INTO requires a CREATE TABLE beforehand. As of right now, there is no generic way to infer a schema. The main issue here is the massive diversity of CSV encodings. 

That being said, the MonetDB.R connector does support schema "guessing" through the monetdb.read.csv function.

Also, I have been working on a Python script to automate the CSV loading task. The script (importer.py) is available from my CWI page. It works as follows:

./importer.py -h
usage: importer.py [-h] [--database DATABASE] [--port PORT] [--user USER]
                   [--password PASSWORD] [--header] [--yes]
                   files [files ...]

A "smarter" CSV loader for MonetDB, v.0.3, hannes@cwi.nl, 2014-05

positional arguments:
  files                One or many CSV files to be imported

optional arguments:
  -h, --help           show this help message and exit
  --database DATABASE  Database name to connect to
  --port PORT          MonetDB TCP port, defaults to 50000
  --user USER          MonetDB username, defaults to "monetdb"
  --password PASSWORD  MonetDB password, defaults to "monetdb"
  --header             set if given CSV file has a header in the first line
  --yes                if set, assume Yes on all questions


Usage example:

./importer.py --database acs ~/Desktop/adult.csv
Now probing '/ufs/hannes/Desktop/adult.csv':

OK, I am going to run the following commands on your DB acs:

CREATE TABLE adult5 (C1 DOUBLE, C2 STRING, C3 STRING, C4 STRING, C5 STRING, C6 STRING, C7 STRING, C8 STRING, C9 STRING, C10 STRING, C11 DOUBLE, C12 STRING, C13 BIGINT);
COPY 35469 OFFSET 1 RECORDS INTO adult5 FROM '/ufs/hannes/Desktop/adult.csv' USING DELIMITERS ',','\n','"' NULL AS '' LOCKED;

Proceed? [Y/n] y
imported 30162 rows from /ufs/hannes/Desktop/adult.csv in 3 second(s)


If there are any problems, please let me know.