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