a lot more information as far as details would help, but

if the data is important line by line, then for me, each line should be stored as a row/column in a table.

it sounds like you want to duplicate an existing process, but do it in SQL instead.

so the right thing to do would be to import each line as a row of data, and chop that data up into relevant columns; that way you can better search and manipulate the data itself.