Nonono. This has got nothing to do with mySQL, or databases.
What Tolwyn meant was, instead of extracting ships.tbl, editing it, and then putting it back into the vp, you can just create a folder called "tables" in your <WCS directory>\data\ directory, and save the modified .tbl there.
This will automatically override the ships.tbl in the WCS vp, while still keeping that vp intact.
Altering vps is a really, really bad idea, since it creates support nightmares when something goes wrong (and, unless you really know what you are doing, something will).
The correct way to do this would be to create a new folder in your main WCS directory, call it "trinijoys_mod" or whatever, create a "data" folder in there, and a "tables" directory in THAT, and then put your altered table in that.
Then open the Launcher, select the "Mod" tab, click on the "Select Mod"-button, and select your mod directory.