Tree structures...

What's the best way to deal with tree structures? Use the following setup in a database as an example: ID | Parent | Description ------------------------ 1 | | Colours 2 | 1 | Red 3 | | Hello 4 | 1 | Green 5 | 4 | Light 6 | 4 | Dark This should be represented as: 1. Colours 4. +--Green 6. +--Dark 5. +--Light 2. +--Red 3. Hello (ie, in tree structure and ordered alphabetically by 'descriptiu What's the best way to select the data and render it in HTML? I thought about going thru each element (of the whole table) at a time, and making an array, dynamically adding bits of the tree together until the whole tree has been grown ... but it seems a little bit complicated and slow ... is there anything that could be done [database]server-side which might help me? Or do other people have code snippets, ideas or anything which might help me?? Thanks, Siggy