Sap XI reading external databases (DB/2 on PC)

My company looking at Sap XI, to replace interfaces written by Sap Business Connector (BC). Currently BC connects to remote PC database (Db2) are reads the table via odbc connections and passes the data thru BC into Sap Function Module (RFC) as input parameters.

Questions

1. Can Sap XI connect to remote database (PC) directly or do you need to convert the data into XML format ?

2 In Business Connector a remote PC Appl can trigger a process on BC to run via Http statement, I.e., http://abcbuscon01:5555/invoke/ABCXXX.Process/SAP_ABC_Interface

Can you do this in Sap XI ? If so, what does the command in the remote system look like to tirgger a process on XI to run.

Thanks for any assistance...

Bill Sharp