I usually create my PHP from scratch and I'm not used to big PHP application ... well I'm a PHP beginner

My probleme now that I'm trying to use CMSMS is that I'm lost into the new vocabulary and new way of doing stuff that used to work in the messy way.
For exemple :
- I used to make tables with AUTO_INCREMENT id en then just INSERT .. now I must use $newid = $db->GenID (cms_db_prefix ()."TM_seasons_seq"); before inserting a new row in my tables.
- I used to use mysql_fetch_rows($dbresult) but now in CMSMS I must use $dbresult->RowCount() (tooks me half a day to figure it)
And then what about include() ? can I use it through the action.nameoftheaction.php pages of my new module ?
Thanks a lot in advance for your help.