In need of advice URGENT

[john mattucci]

I have spent the last couple of hours reading this
years posting in regards to Applets and connecting
to databases. Im still a little confused, sorry Im new to Applets.
I need to design an Applet which will be placed in
a Lotus Notes email. This applet is quite basic it will need to obtain employee info eg. name, phone# ect. At most a dozen fields. The info is then sent to SQL. My problem like countless others is a security/sandbox issue. I have noticed that several people have suggested the
Applet --> Servlet --> JDBC --> SQL approach.
Im also new to Servlets. My question in the end is, 1)is this the best option? 2)Do I still need to sign the Applet(the email is internal)? 3)In order to avoid signing the Applet do both the Applet & Servlet need to sit on the same server? All help is greatly appreciated