Help with this-> pointers

Hi everyone, Forgive my ignorance, I'm trying to re-write an old contact databse that didn't work. I have everything written out, but the old code used pointers (ie: this->$db). I'm not familiar with that type of code, how can I convert it? ---snip--- $sql="select distinct site from contacts_data where site != '' order by site"; $db->query($sql); while($db->next_record()) ---snip--- And how can I rewrite it to work? here's a copy of my table: CREATE TABLE contacts_data ( id bigint(20) DEFAULT '0' NOT NULL auto_increment, last_name varchar(40) DEFAULT '' NOT NULL, middle_initial char(1) DEFAULT '' NOT NULL, first_name varchar(40) DEFAULT '' NOT NULL, work_phone varchar(20), extension varchar(4), cell_phone varchar(20), job_desc varchar(80), department varchar(30), site varchar(30), cell_pre_email varchar(20), cell_post_email varchar(20), cell_unused varchar(20), email varchar(160), web varchar(160), home_phone varchar(20), home_street varchar(50), home_city varchar(20), home_state char(2), home_zip varchar(5), work_street varchar(50), work_city varchar(20), work_state char(2), work_zip varchar(5), notes varchar(255), PRIMARY KEY (id), UNIQUE id (id), UNIQUE last_name (last_name,middle_initial,first_name) ); TIA! -Clayton