[fw-db] The best way to approach the database

Hello everyone.

I'm confused. First I thought about writing my own class to talk to my (mysql) database. But then I thought, what Am I doing? Zend is actually doing this for me.  So then i tried several things. And I ended up by just writing my full sql statement and then using $this->db->fetchAll($sql); But I have the feeling that this is not what Zend_Db  was aiming for. I read in several places that the use of Zend_Db_Table is preferable.
Can someone please help me out and thell me what the best thing is to do?

Thanks in advance.

J. Sanders