(http://phpxmlrpc.sourceforge.net/)

This particular connector I am "overseeing" the fine-tuning of, is working mostly correctly.

1) The connector was written for oscommerce and although it does not have any calls to osc functions, it is all direct db queries like
mysql_query("insert etc..

which for some reason makes me uneasy.
Is there any case (security/safety) to use the standard zen functions instead?

2) I would like the admin activity log to note when the connector does something.
Is there a function I could call to do that, or a dummy page it could load to trigger a log entry, or just easier to directly insert a record in the log?