Recursive select

Hi all!

Anyone know if it's possible to make a recursive select from a table ?
My problem: I got a table of "some categories" which all points to its
parrent one(tree)...shown below. And I want to select all names of
parrent categories of one child, lets say "fast[4]". Now I'm solving that
with
many SQL queries like : "SELECT main_id FROM cat WHERE id=4;"....but I would
like to optimize this.

Anyone can help or point me to a way ??

Thanks a lot,Minca

Table : CAT
ID | Main_id | Name
=========================
1 0 Car
2 1 Crash
3 1 Wash
4 3 Fast
5 1 Second_hand
6 0 House
7 3 Slow
....etc

*(root)[0]
-Car[1]
-Crash[2]
-Wash[3]
-Fast[4]
-Slow[7]
-Second hand[5]
-House[6]