[web2py] Does "return" have to be the last statement in a function?

[Michael McGinnis]

While a visitor is reading a page/looking at the view, I'd like to be
doing something in the background in preparation for his or her next
action, or to finish processing his previous action. Right now all my
functions end with "return" statements that display a view. Do they
have to end with return statements, or can I put a crud.update
statement or something at the end? I could put database functions in
the view, as I did with PHP, but that would violate M-V-C best
practices, of course.