Proper coding?

Fellow PHP list members, I'm hoping you can share your knowledge and help me. I'm incorping the PEAR:DB module into my scripts and I'm running into a situation. To make a long story short.. I basically have 2 files. Index.php and an include file I'm calling db_functions.php which I'm creating myself. ** NOTE: watch for wrapping ** In the index.php file I have the following code: require_once('include/db_connect.php'); require_once('include/db_functions.php'); /* includes commonly used functions */ require_once('common.php'); $sphist_rec_count = GetRecCount('RecentActiveSpaces','RECENT_SPACE_COUNT'); In my db_functions.php, I have the function called GetRecCount(). It basically retrieves the Record count from a mySQL table. For some reason, the "db_object" object doesn't get created unless I include the db_connect.php inside the GetRecCount function. Something tells me that this is not proper Coding, and I was wondering if someone could tell me if there is another way to do this? Thanks, Jim