To me, it looks as though Authorware and Flash do the same things, but, my
question is; I'm diriving a quiz-type thing in Flash (let users answer
questions, keep their input in memory on one question then proceed to the next
question, and save their input to SQL database on submitting)....now, which
package does this and what should I research withing that package that does
what I'm trying to do? Many thanks in advance..

I don't know Authorware, but I do know that you can accomplish what you're
trying to do with Flash. You can use Remoting or LoadVars objects, with a
middle tier (such as ColdFusion) to connect to SQL Server.

I know that if you use Authorware, you don't need a middleware (ASP, PHP,
etc.). As of this moment, I don't know a method of connecting to a local
database using Flash. As it appears to me, all data connection using flash has
to be via middleware, which is an absolute pain! If I'm wrong in this
assumption, somebody please correct me, because I would love to know how it is
done.