Well, the second half of your question regarding JSP/Servlets would probably be better answered in a seperate forum. There is a forum for JSP and a forum for Servlets. I would suggest posting that part of your question in the JSP forum.
As for your
JDBC question, I am going to assume that you mean an Access Database, not an Excel database, since Excel is a spreadsheet application. (Though the underlying funtion is probably the same between Access and Excel). Yes, you typically have to use DNS entries to comunicate with an Access Databse. I have seen Drivers that use a DNSless connection, but it is not supported everywhere.
As far as connecting to an Access Database on a seperate machine, in both cases stated above, you would have to have a physical drive mapped to the PC where the database resides.
Is there any reason you are using Access instead of something like MySQL? I would suggest staying as far away from Access as possible.
BTW - There is a naming policy here at Javaranch. A moderator will probably let you know about it unless you go ahead and change your name to adhere to that policy. Just giving you a heads up.
[ February 15, 2003: Message edited by: Gregg Bolinger ]