pgsql.php problems: possible weirdness

hello all,
I am having a page in which I initialize a pgsql connection with
something like the below:

	$dsn=array(phptype => DNS_DATABASE, hostspec=> "localhost", database=>
"dns");
	$database=DB::connect($dsn);

after setting up a connection, I (surely) can query database and make
various operations on it. However, when it comes to passing a connection
handle to a class there comes the problems:

I am having a contact class with such a constructor:

class contact {
	function contact(&$dbHandle) {}
}

In the php code of the PAGE, i write such a line to instantiate	a new
contact:
	$x=new contact($database);

However when I try to use one of the db aware methods of contact class
(just as the one below) I get warnings:

function dummy() {
		$this->dbHandle->autoCommit(FALSE);
                $queryStr="select * from contact order by contactid
desc";
                $handle=$this->dbHandle->query($queryStr);
                if (DB::isError($handle)) {
                        echo "there is an error";
                }
		$count=$this->dbHandle->numrows($handle);
		$myrow=$this->dbHandle->fetchrow($handle);
}

Warning: Illegal offset type in DB/pgsql.php on line 256

Warning: Illegal offset type in DB/pgsql.php on line 256

(using latest pgsql.php from CVS)

when vardumped, $this->dbHandle and $handle look as instances of
appropriate
classes; but var_dump($count) shows 

object(db_error)(10) { ["error_message_prefix"]=> string(0) ""
["error_prepend"]=> string(0) "" ["error_append"]=> string(0) ""
["mode"]=> int(1) ["level"]=> int(1024) ["code"]=> int(-1) ["message"]=>
string(23) "DB Error: unknown error" ["debuginfo"]=> string(0) ""
["userinfo"]=> string(74) "select * from contact order by contactid
desc" ["callback"]=> NULL } 

anybody with any ideas? I've had been using PEAR for some time but this
error seemed weird to me...

with regards,
-bd