Charlie, What you want is a Pluggable Brain. Have a look in the Zope Book chapter on relational database integration: there are some examples. Create a file in your Extensions folder: --- file "somefile.py" --- import string class MyBrain: def fav_food(self): return string.split(self.bigfield, ',')[0] def fav_color(self): return string.split(self.bigfield, ',')[1] Then in the Advanced tab of your SQL query, enter the filename and the name of the class in the box where it asks what class to bind to the results. Now in the DTML you can write: <dtml-in query_favourites> <dtml-var fav_food> <dtml-var fav_color> <dtml-in> and it should work. To be honest my DTML is rusty - I use ZPT more often these days - but I think this should work, modulo typos/brainos (I haven't tested any of this code.) David