Why don't you have access at the database level?

my $dbh = DBI->connect("dbi:Oracle:host=server.domain.com; sid=sid; po
+rt=1521", "username", "password")
[download]

This contains all the relevant details to connect via sqlplus or SQL Developer. I don't mean any disrespect, but extracting such a large amount of rows and processing them by hand (or any other tool) can only be several orders of magnitude slower than doing it in SQL or at least PL/SQL. Could you explain the requirement, even in abstract form, here or on Oracle's forum? I'm sure people would come up with suggestions for an improved query.