[Zope] Zope and Data Entry

I am designing a site which will be used for a lot of data entry. I have zope 2.1.2 and mysql talking nicely. Now my problem is design. I want the user to be able to fill in a form using some HTML select fields, these fields should then be translated into their respective item IDs for input into my table. So even though the user chooses: cat dog mouse the sql final method should be: insert into table animals (cID, dID, mID) values (12, 14, 18) In a CGI, I would use a python dictionary or perl hash to translate the keys into their values before makeing. But I'm a little stumped with zope? Should I handle this with an external method or can I do it with straight sql methods and built-ins?