This paper presents the design, implementation, and evaluation of the etree, a database-oriented method for large out-of-core octree mesh generation. The main idea is to map an octree to a database structure and perform all octree operations by querying and updating the database. We apply two standard database techniques, the linear octree and the B-tree, to index and store the octants on disk. Then we introduce two new techniques, auto-navigation and local balancing, to address the special needs of mesh generation. Preliminary evaluation suggests that the etree method is an effective way of generating very large octree meshes on desktop machines.