output Question!

Hello guys,

I have a question about solving an output problem in Oracle. At this moment I'm working as a post-doc in Cambridge and I have to set up a database for paleo-climatologic data. There are a lot of these data by the way. Since these data are public I want to be able to export (on tape) the complete database in a handy way. My data is basically organized in the following way: core, sample, description:

core 		-- these are cores acquired during drilling projects
sample 		-- this is the actual measurement somewhere in the core
description 	-- describes wat kind of data can be found in an
		   particular sample

core
	identifier (give every core a unique number)

sample	
	identifier (give every sample a unique number)
	description (what kind of data is value: O2-isotope or density etc)
	core (to which core belongs this sample)
	value (the actual value)

description
	identifier (give every description a unique number)
	what (give a description)

Actually the structure is much more complex but this suffices to describe my problem.

Let's say we have 3 cores(1..3), 3 descriptions(a..b) 7 and samples

samples: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

identifier	1  	2  	3  	4  	5  	6  	7
description     a  	c  	c  	b  	a  	a  	b
core            3  	1  	3  	2  	1  	3  	2
value           5  	9  	25	1	7	3	11

I want to be able to construct the following directory-structure

				cores_directory
	|------------------------|----------------------|
	|			 |			|
	1			 2			3
_________________	_________________	________________
|	|	|	|	|	|	|	|	|
a	b	c	a	b	c	a	b	c
7		9		1		5		25
				11		3		

In which every core has its own directory and the descriptions are files which contain the proper data.

How do I do this??
I can loop over every core and every description using PL/SQL and the CURSOR construct, but from within PL/SQL there is no output possible?????

Thanks in advance, I'm really stuck with this.

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Paul Sjoerdsma, Godwin Laboratory, Free School Lane,
Cambridge CB2 3RS England
fax:   (44) (0)223-334871
email: pgs1002_at_cus.cam.ac.uk


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