Right. Essentially I want to treat the SQL method like a function call which returns a value and not a list.

Two points... First, all SQLMethods return lists. This eliminates the need to test if the result from a ZSQLMethod is a value or a list in DTML every single time you use a ZSQLMethod object -- this is a Win. Of course, your point about wanting to cleanly get at what you know to be a single row (e.g., SELECT MAX) is a very common one. I'll poke around and see what I see -- IMO, you and Oleg are right, there should be (probably is) a way to grab the data directly. --Rob