For certain types of unix pipeing, I have found it useful to pipe from tool to CSV, and then let sqlite process the data, using SQL statements. SQL solves many of the sorting, filtering, joining things that you can do with unix pipes too, but with a syntax that is broadly known. Especially the joining I have found hard to do well with shell/piping.

I think a sqlite-aware shell would be awesone, especially if common tools had a common output format (like csv with header) where that also included the schema / data format.