yes and no...
I have imported a flat file into a database over the web very quickly. The file size was about 4.5 meg and takes less than a minute or 2.
This is reading line by line, though.. nonetheless, importing 25,000 records into a db from a flat file is pretty quick.
This is even doing a little logic/editing the data before it is inserted.
I was amazed at how fast it was.
Not sure how much time it would add, reading character by character.