[Zope] Questions re: REQUEST, external methods; newbie stupidity at play

[Bryan White]

>
>At the risk of suggesting something obvious, have you read the docs?  
>
>http://www.zope.org/Documentation/Books/ZopeBook/2_6Edition/RelationalDatabases.stx
>http://www.zope.org/Documentation/Guides/ZSQL-HTML/ZSQL.html
>
>I suspect what you're missing is that you're trying to re-create stuff
>that Zope already does for you.  Only in specific cases is explicit
>"passing" required.  I don't sense that yours is one of them.
>
>  
>
Actually, I am positively drowning in the docs, which is part of the 
problem. Between the official Zope docs, the "Book of Zope" from 
Beehive, and the tons of informal user-created documentation on the net, 
there are no less than 50 answers for any question. Thanks for the 
explicit links rather than just a blind 'RTFM', for sure, though.

I suspect my bad habits are coming from my scripty background rather 
than anything else. I am spoiled by creating and discarding variables 
arbitrarily in basically procedural code. So, if I have a mess like:

1. Some DTML stuff to make logical decisions
2. Some unrelated stuff
3. Some more DTML that depends on the decisions made in step 1

In order to find out the result of the decisions made in step 1 when I 
am in step 3, I want to look at the value of some variables. As far as I 
can tell the only way to keep track of the stuff is in REQUEST. I am, in 
fact, calling my ZSQL methods with parameters and only in once case 
relying on REQUEST for that (userid in the database of the current user, 
using exUserFolder). It's the fact that I am acutally using DTML for a 
lot of core logic that I am using REQUEST. <dtml-let> absolutely will 
not work for me as the variables need to span a bunch of <dtml-in> and 
<dtml-if> blocks.

Reading my own responses in the thread here, I realize that I am showing 
myself to be a complete noob who probably shouldn't be even allowed to 
use the py interpreter.

Hrmph.

Thanks for the insight, all.