Thanks Vince....it helped me a lot.
The above code was correct, but the $products was not available in the search.php
I've added the following to search.php
Code:
$products = func_query("select distinct param03 from $sql_tbl[products] where $sql_tbl[products].param03 <>'' order by $sql_tbl[products].param03 asc");
$smarty->assign("products",$products);
Right after the require lines.