Creating a table with merged cells

Hi I need to represent a sort of map. The map is a rectangular table of size X in widht and Y in height, so that I have X*Y square cells. I need to record in a database some infos for each cell. This is easy, I thought to use a record that is something like (X,Y,MyData), so with two nested loops I can create the HTML table with data in it. The problem is that I need to join adjacent cells, so that I can obtain bigger cells made of base little square cells. So, starting from a table like this (see with fixed size font) +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | | | | | | | | | | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | | | | | | | | | | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | | | | | | | | | | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ I must find a way to store in the database a table like this +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | 2 | | | |4 cells| +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ | |BIGBIGB| | | | | +-+BIGBIGB+-+-+-+-+ | |BIGBIGB| | | | | +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ I thougt to use a record like (X,Y,XWIDTH,YHEIGHT,DATA), but I cannot imagine the way to create the resulting HTML table. Using graphics will be a lot easyer, but I must insert combos and checkboxes into the cells, so I must use html... Any ideas? Thanks!