Wading My Way through the Wrox Book-- have a few questions

1)It's not clear, and this will heavily influence how we use PostGresQL in
the future--- once you have a DB created through cygwin is the DB like an
access DB-- here's a file, modify as you like, no services need to be
running, or a MSSQL DB--- the server MUST be running @ all times to do
anything with the data in the DB??

2)_Beginning Databases with PostgresSQL_ was published in 2001. It refers to
a registry hack to get postgresql to auto start on Windows; is there another
way to do this with the current cygwin and postgresql and ipc builds
(everything downloaded 12/30/2 as the newest full build)? I prefer not to
hack the registry; it tends to make network support people really cranky. :>

3)Is there another book that would be helpful? A website I'm missing? Most
of the site's I'm reading assume a prior knowledge of All Things Open Source
Especially Configuring And Installing Things On Linux and my friends on IRC
are about to shoot me if I ask one more time how to get something up and
running (one of the installs didn't include basic things like, "you will
need to run make", and as a windows/Mac person I had never used make
before.)

I'm running postgresql through cygwin on a windows 2000 workstation working
towards implementation on a NT ( I know, ick) server as a web backend for a
homebuilt calendar database.

Any advice (aside from the usual MS rants :>) appreciated!

Cheryl in Texas