Converting bib database into csv

Open the .bib-files in Jabref and export them as OpenOffice .csv-files. You find the option under the menu File, Export

Since you can run Jabreffrom the program's home page, you don't have to install it. You need Java, though.

Best bet would be a scripting language, e.g. Python. I don't know if you are a programmer, but making a script taking each entry and converting them should be pretty quick (provided typing python script_file.py in the prompt doesn't scare you!). Python is also installed by default on most Unix OSes.

Here's a basic python script which accesses a few fields:

from pybtex.database.input import bibtex

#open a bibtex file
parser = bibtex.Parser()
bibdata = parser.parse_file("myrefs.bib")

#loop through the individual references
for bib_id in bibdata.entries:
    b = bibdata.entries[bib_id].fields
    try:
        # change these lines to create a SQL insert
        print(b["title"])
        print(b["journal"])
        print(b["year"])
        #deal with multiple authors
        for author in bibdata.entries[bib_id].persons["author"]:
            print(author.first(), author.last())
    # field may not exist for a reference
    except(KeyError):
        continue

You can adapt it to your needs and save desired fields to a .csv file.

A python version using bibtexparser bibtexparser and pandas

with open('ref.bib') as bibtex_file:
  bib_database = bibtexparser.load(bibtex_file)
df = pd.DataFrame(bib_database.entries)
df.to_csv('ref.csv', index=False)

And a minimal working example:

import bibtexparser
import pandas as pd

bibtex = """@article{ einstein1935can,
            title={Can quantum-mechanical description of physical reality be considered complete?},
            author={Einstein, Albert and Podolsky, Boris and Rosen, Nathan},
            journal={Physical review},
            volume={47},number={10},
            pages={777},
            year={1935},
            publisher={APS}}
            @inproceedings{sharma2017daniel,
            title={DANIEL: A deep architecture for automatic analysis and retrieval of building floor plans},
            author={Sharma, Divya and Gupta, Nitin and Chattopadhyay, Chiranjoy and Mehta, Sameep},
            booktitle={2017 14th IAPR International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR)},
            volume={1},pages={420--425},year={2017},organization={IEEE}}"""

with open('ref.bib', 'w') as bibfile:
  bibfile.write(bibtex)
with open('ref.bib') as bibtex_file:
  bib_database = bibtexparser.load(bibtex_file)
df = pd.DataFrame(bib_database.entries)
df.to_csv('ref.csv', index=False)