On 22/01/13 22:06, Roger Munford wrote:
> In the early 90's, I wrote a programme which organised home deliveries
> for a farmer friend of mind. It was optimised for the office staff to
> take orders over the telephone, the customers being supplied with a
> printed catalogue. It was written in Foxpro now sadly no longer with us.
>
> In 2005 I wrote a website using PHP and MySQL to enable customers to
> order online however the main work is still being done by the original
> programme which hasn't had to change because the business hasn't
> changed (apart from a few extras like emailing PDF invoices etc).
>
> The delivery programme updated the websites product data and collected
> orders via a direct connection to the MySQL database via an ODBC
> connection.
>
> Since 2005 the website has been split on to two hosts, one part has
> the day to day information stuff and is continually being reworked but
> the original online ordering part has been left intact - until today.
>
> The hosting company which has been taken over twice since 2005,
> shifted the website to another server pretty much without warning.
> They claim to have sent an email to the farmer just before Christmas,
> just when food retailers are having a quiet time. The probably did but
> I am sure it was full of techno gobbledy gook justifying their very
> steep price rise but nothing to alert the farmer that his website was
> going to be smashed.
>
> It took the best part of the day to get things running again but the
> killer problem is that they are no longer going to allow direct
> connection to the database anymore. After a lot of pleading we got 7
> days grace and a connection from the farm will be allowed.
>
> Clearly we have to go somewhere else. Can anybody recommend a hosting
> company that will provide a direct connection to MySQL?
>
> The "support" told me that it was a wicked thing to do a huge security
> risk. Not having been involved in software for several years, I am
> willing to believe that it could have become a problem, but is it such
> a risk that nobody will offer direct connections. If so what are the
> the mechanisms that are unsafe? Also what alternative techniques are
> available to transfer data between databases.
>
> If you are interested the site is www.sunnyfields.co.uk Click on
> online ordering to step back to 2005. It is a bit long in the tooth by
> today’s standards but it was just as fast over a modem and you didn't
> have to spend a lot of time scrolling.
>
> Thanks for your attention.
>
> Roger
>
>
>
>
>
HI Roger
I not very up on SQL web hosting but have a word with TSOHost, very good
service very reasonable rate. I got recommend to them several years ago
by a post on this lug, not looked back since, they have a pre sales
forum (
http://forums.tsohost.co.uk/) where you can ask questions and you
will quite possibly get an answer at this time at night
Tim
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