Btw, you don't have to use the ns_db API if you query the primary database. Just use the OpenACS API as usual. ns_db calls are only necessary if you want to access a database pool that cannot be handled by the OpenACS API which is the case for other than the primary database (and this is also the reason why one has to exclude the second database's pool from API access).
Again, all this is based on ACS 3.x and Oracle. I hope others would be able to correct me if that's not the case anymore for OpenACS 4.x.
