My client runs IBMs' UDB 5 database engine on OS/2 Servers with NT clients (their choice not mine). I'm a newbie with Zope and wanted to understand the ODBC very well before trying to tie into UDB5 (since my guess is that I am the first one stupid enough to try this). So I started with something real simple. A text file with four columns and three records. I can create an ODBC connection through Zope with no problem. Going to the browse tab in the management screen actually shows me the table with the column definitions ... so I am getting from Zope, through the ODBC connector, through the WinNT ODBC drivers to the text file. Cool! ======= Now to do real work, I create a DTML Method with the following <!--#var standard_html_header--> .... <dtml-in ZopeODBCTest> <dtml-var LAST_NAME> </dtml-in> <!--#var standard_html_footer--> Running the 'View' returns the following result Zope has encountered an error while publishing this resource. Error Type: AttributeError Error Value: __len__ So I ran grep on all the *.py files thinking that this might be a rare name ... woops. I'm still trying to figure out DTML and haven't dove into Python yet. Debugging the python code (or searching for my erroneous ways is still a week or so off .... if not more). ====== Assuming that my incredibly complicated code is buggy (proof reading three lines of code is tough), I decided to create a Z SQL Method with the following SQL. select * from ZopeTest Well I did and I get this result when running it. Error, sql.error: ('S1000', -1032, "[Microsoft][ODBC Text Driver] The Microsoft Jet database engine cannot open the file 'ZopeTest.txt'. It is already opened exclusively by another user, or you need permission to view its data.") Hmmm. Access issues? I'm logged on as a local Admin Already openned? The ODBC Connector gets there fine to read the tables (or is it just reading the schema.ini? ... not sure yet). Nothing else that I know of has it openned. ... no network locks, this is all done on a local system at this point. ======= So much for connecting to a real database, I can't even get to a text file. @>:-{ ======= Any pointers (pointing out my stupidity) or assistance would be greatly appreciated. Gracias.