I am trying to create a small Internet application to access a mySQL
database on specific client machines around the country and query their
database and send the query result to our web server and then process
further data on the web server.   Here is the layout:  There are
several client machines around the country that have a mySQL database
installed and will give us certain query privileges for this database.
I need users on these client machines to be able to run an Internet
application from our web server which queries their local database and
then sends information to our server.

I see two options:  a trusted, signed applet or a full java application
- also digitally signed - that is deployed through the Java Web Start
technology. (This is a very simple query on the client with a simple
drop-down list for the user to select from the query result - nothing
complicated.)

Does anybody have any suggestion as to which method is preferable?  The
end users who will be running this application are not very computer
savvy and might not be able to figure out browser messages like "Your
browser understands the <APPLET> tag but isn't running the applet, for
some reason."  For this reason I thought that the Java Web Start method
might be preferable, but I have no idea how reliable this method is and
what kind of kinks I will have to work through.

I also wonder if the Microsoft .net environment might offer an
alternative (our web server is Microsoft IIS and the clients are all
Windows XP or Windows 2000).

Any thoughts?  

Thank you.
Anke