[Zope] Newbie question--external methods, DTML and DB connection persistence

[elian@inbrief.net]

Hello,

I've been scouring all the documentation available (Zope Book, howtos,
newsgroups, etc.) but still have not been able to establish:

1. Whether it is possible for external methods to send SQL queries to an
RDBMS using database connections defined in Zope, so that the persistent
database connections are used. Or, if this is not possible, how to do so
with Python scripts.

2. How to return result rows from a SQL selection in an external method or
Python script so that <dtml-in  my_external_method> and <dtml-var
column_name_from_result_set> tags work as well as when using ZSQL methods.

I'm trying to do so because I'd like to move all logic out of DTML, using
it just for templating (until ZPT is more mature and documented). I'd
rather use external methods because Python scripts are just too limiting
(e.g. no support for many of the modules I'd like to use).

Can anybody please help me understand whether what I want to do is
possible, and how to do it?


...Edmund.