Using SQL to create and then apply attributes will probably take far longer than creating them in Admin, and applying them to products.

The only consolation is that if you have products that SHARE identical attributes, you can COPY these across products and categories.

I have found that using this COPY feature is fastest - even where products DON'T share all attributes, it's quicker to copy and then to ADD a copule (or even DELETE a couple) - as this is faster than assigning them in the conventional way.

Having said that, the commercially available version of Easy Populate is said to handle the upload of attributes. You may want to research that.