Creating and processing forms that access a database

["Reuven M. Lerner" <reuven@lerner.co.il>]

I thought that I had figured out how to use MiniVend, but I'm trying
to accomplish something seeming simple, and getting nowhere fast.

I have to use MiniVend for a task that I know how to accomplish with
CGI: Submitting a form to the server, and having a CGI program
retrieve the form elements, use them to query an SQL database, and
give the results to the user.

Specifically, I would like to know two things:

(1) What is the generic way for me to create a form that is processed
    by a MiniVend template of my choosing?  That is, I would like to
    create MiniVend template form.html, whose "submit" button passes
    the HTML form elements to MiniVend template results.html.  I have
    been playing with forms, the "mv_doit" hidden tag, and and the
    [value] MiniVend template tag, without much success.

    So, how do I duplicate CGI functionality with MiniVend?  I don't
    care about the underlying technology, but it's frustrating not to
    know how to pick out form elements.

    Must I got through the "search" program?  What does that gain me?

(2) I know that MiniVend's query engine is supposed to handle most or
    all of the SQL queries that I might like.  But I would like to
    give users a choice of <select> fields in an form, and then
    perform an OR match on them.  That is, I would like the resulting
    SQL query to look like

	SELECT id, product_name
	FROM Products
	WHERE product.region = 1
	OR product.target_population = 2
	OR product.price = 3

    If I use mv_searchfield and mv_searchspec, then it would seem that
    MiniVend always performs an AND search.  I want users to be able
    to create an arbitrarily loose or tight search, narrowing things
    as necessary by choosing more elements from <select> lists.

Any ideas?  I have been reading the documentation for days, and cannot
find an obvious solution to either of the above.

Reuven