First, thank you to everyone for the replies. I apologize for the tardiness of my respnose back but I've been through airport hell this weekend and I'm just getting back to the task at hand.

InjunJoel and SamCG:
Thank you for posting the code and I'll read through it and definately learn from it!

davies:
A database is something I hadn't thought of. I might be able to get the change control to let me install mysql on the box altho I have minimal exposure to sql.

TedPride:
This process will only have to be run once a night so that helps from what I'm seeing in your post.

graff:
That makes sense too! Thank you for the code example!

CountZero:
Cpan! got it! I was reading some of that but there is alot to wade through!

ambrus:
I do have cygwin installed on the box so Join is an option.

To all:

Thank you for being so informative with your replies. I have multiple paths to look at and learn from. I am reading man pages and the camel book but its taking some time.

mn