getting integer info.

Two JDBC questions.  I'm using the JDBC driver that I created when
compiling postgres.

1) I use the following line to connect to postgres when I'm running
servlets on the same machine as the database.

conn =
DriverManager.getConnection("jdbc:postgresql:business","postgres","");

How do I change this URL to be used when connecting across the lan?


2) It seems that there is a problem getting an integer from a result
set.  If you use a simple select statement and it fills the result set
with a string you can use the   result.getString("columnname");  and it
works fine.  If you the same type of select with an integer column, and
you use result.getInt("columnname"), it immediately goes to the catch
block.  (result is really a ResultSet object instance).

Any help in this would be very helpful.

-Mark