Globals off and passing data

I'm working in a multitiered envoronment in development. I'd like to turn globals off, but I can't figure out how to pass data back and forth between machines. I'm sending data to a database machine using POST, and I can use the data once it gets there, but I can't seem to get anything back. At the moment I'm using a meta refresh statement to get back to the next page on the web server on the originating machine (would like something more elegant than this to go to the next page, but just getting some data back is first on my list). Does such a thing as a tutorial exist for this? TIA, Paul