Best way to extract and use data from a server database?

I have been tasked for an internship to retrieve data from the company's database and make a webapp displaying stats and graphs about it.

So far since my the langage I know the most is Java, I was thinking of extracting the SQL tables into .CSV files that I'd exploit to make the stats. But is there another more efficient way to do it that i'm missing ? Would another langage make the situation easier aswell ?