Access another database from a custom page?

[refreshmentshop]

I need to access a separate MySQL database from inside a custom page in Zen Cart.

I foolishly just added the code to access the database I wanted into the page, only to discover that this overrides Zen Carts connection to it's own database... ZC looks for tables like 'layout_boxes' in my database where it's obviously not going to find them.

Closing the connection to my database once I'm finished with it doesn't help.

This is all going in a tpl_mycustompage_default.php file in the includes/templates/mytemplate/templates directory.

Do I need to reconnect to the Zen Cart DB after I've finished doing my thing? Any ideas?

[refreshmentshop]

OK, I gave up and just added my table to the Zen Cart database...

So now I'm using:

$result = $db->Execute("SELECT whatever FROM my_table");

So what would be the equivalent of a mysql_fetch_row($result) using Zen Cart methods?