Split transactions, imports, and the db backend

[Scott Wood]

I'm just i nthe process of trying out gnucash for the first time and
have a couple of questions:  

1)  My imports from QIF's always seem to misallocate split
transactions.  e.g., in my checkign account, all of my paychecks, which
are splits between deposits, taxes, and 401 contributions, end up as
withdrawls.  And, for that matter, withdrawls that allocate to diffeent
things (e.g., different expenses) are listed as deposits.  Some of them
just seem to put things in the wrong places...i.e. the spit entries that
are deposits should be withdrawls and the split entries and are
withdrawls should be deposits.  But other entries seem to just not add
things correctly...that is all the split entries are correct, but the
net is listed as a withdrawl rather than a deposit. 

I suspect two issues:  one, the account is being treated as a liability
rather than an asset, and two, soemthing funny is going on with the
"account" that gnucash made out of the payees.  If I understand things
correctly, the payees are should really just be text comments, rather
than accounts.  Quicken accounts and categories should be gnucash
accounts.  

2)  I understand that gnucash uses a postgreSQL database back end.  Does
this imply that I could connect to the database using some other front
end for other purposes?  As a professional DBA (Oracle), the inability
to fashion my own custom SQL was always a (minor) sore point with me. 
--sw