[Zope] Help - ZODB Couldn't load state

[Michael Hamilton]

Is it possible to use ZODB to access a non Zope filestore from an external
method that is being called from Zope?  I'm getting an error when I try to
do so?

I'm trying to use ZODB to store some data.  I've created my own DB and
filestore outside of zope and it works find with my external test rig.  
But when I integrate my code into Zope as external methods, when I try to
retreive objects I get errors such as:

In the browser window:
     Zope has encountered an error while publishing this resource. 

     Error Type: AttributeError
     Error Value: User

with the tail of the stack trace reading:

  File /usr/local/Python/local/lib/ServiceQuery.py, line 36, in __init__
  File /usr/local/Python/local/lib/ObjectStore.py, line 47, in getObject
  File /usr/local/Zope/Zope-2.1.2-src/lib/python/ZODB/Connection.py, line 396, in setstate
  File /usr/local/Zope/Zope-2.1.2-src/lib/python/ZODB/Connection.py, line 193, in _persistent_load
    (Info: ('\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\030', ('__main__', 'User')))
  File /usr/local/Zope/Zope-2.1.2-src/lib/python/ZODB/Connection.py, line 153, in __getitem__

And the stderr of the server emits:

2000-01-21T09:58:11 ERROR(200) ZODB Couldn't load state for '\000\000\000\000\000\000\000\000'