Session questions

I'm having some problems with session and I'm hoping someone can help me. I am using php version 4.0.2. I am having PHP store the session information in a mysql database. The DB is called "sessions" and the sessions table looks like this: +---------+------------------+------+-----+---------+-------+ | Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra | +---------+------------------+------+-----+---------+-------+ | sesskey | varchar(32) | | PRI | | | | expiry | int(11) unsigned | | | 0 | | | value | text | | | NULL | | +---------+------------------+------+-----+---------+-------+ I have 2 pages. The first is starting a session and registering a variable. It is then pushing to the second page via header( "location" ). My questions and problems are: * When I register my variable, the "value" field stores the value I passed, but it now looks like this: !myvalue| why? Why is the session_register() adding the bang (!) and the pipe (|) at the beginning and the end of my variable? * I've turned off cookies on my browser because I want to code all my sessions so that it passes the session id via the URL; I don't want to depend on the user's browser having cookies. I compiled php4 with the --enable-trans-sid turned ON. Also, register globals are turned ON. Now, what is happening is that the session ID is _*not*_ being automatically appended to the URL as it should be. Why wouldn't it be? On a related not, when I try to print out the session id value using the $SID variable, I get nothing. I can get the value from the session_id(), but not from the $SID variable. Why? * From what I understand, I need to call the session_start() function at the top of every one of my pages in order to make sure all the session information is available to each page. This is correct, yes? If so, then why is it that every time I call that function, it creates a new session record in my DB with a totally new session id? How is any kind of continuity supposed to be kept from one page to the other if this is happening? There are a few others, but I need to run off to a meeting and the above are pretty much the major ones I need to resolve. It could very well be that if the above can be fixed, the minor issues will be as well. If anyone at all could help me, I would be so very appreciative. I've been around and around reading up as much as I could and I just cannot seem to figure out why the above is occuring. Thanks for your time in reading this far and for your help, if offered. Chris