Lengthy questions from a newbie

FROM : beinstein
DATE : Tue Jun 20 00:41:32 2006

Hi All:
My company has been having some major trouble with a set of enterprise applications that we developed for SQLServer and windows clients. As we look to completely redesign our workflow, I've (somehow) managed to get permission to investigate the Mac, and it's host of extremely robust and easy-to-use features, as an overall (and I mean OVERHALL) solution. They've greenlit my team and I to develop a demo application to showcase what we can come up with. I'm pretty new to cocoa/objective-c development, but am finding it pretty painless. But we have two major questions we can't seem to work out:
1) Painless database connection. We'd love to use MySQL and it's speed/price/scalability, but there seems to be no widely available framework for connecting to MySQL DBs from cocoa, except a product from Serge Cohen, which is undocumented/unexampled : http://mysql-cocoa.sourceforge.net/. WebObjects is too flimsy (as far as we can determine with mostly web-based apps). And our code, the way it currently stands using the MySQL C-API, is littered with more cString commands then I can stand. It requires 3/4 full lines of code to take the NSString from a text box and dump it into a C-style SQL statement. Our applications require a couple hundred SQL skeletons; its a pain. There HAS to be an easier way. Am I missing something basic?
2) Remote views. Another major feature that has us stumped: building a separate mini-application that allows users on a remote system to fully interact (in a controlled manner) with the primary interface. For example, one system has 3 or 4 sections of questions, and a remote operator can view and answer these questions section by section via a little window at the bottom of the remote system, using previous and next buttons to navigate through the main screen. The main screen must still be accessible and updated when the answers on the remote system are entered. I figure a custom view is best, but we're completely lost about where to start with such a thing.
Any ideas or paths to follow would be greatly appreciated. Sorry for such a lengthy first post.
Thanks in advance.