Restricted Remote Access

[yisraelharris]

I belong to a marketing company with clients who have databases residing on their local computers. We would like to write a program, say written in visualbasic, which would reside on the client's computer, and retrieve and display very specific, limited information from their database. We need to be able to access this program from our computer. And our clients need to know that access to run this program is the only access that we have to their system.

How would this be implemented? It has been suggested to us that pcAnywhere or GoToMyPc could easily accomplish this. Is this true? How does it work? Does anyone have experience with a comparable situation? Are there alternative solutions? How could we make the client feel secure and comfortable that we are not "breaking into" their computer system, but rather only accessing this one program that we need?

Ideas for solutions would be welcome. My background is html/javascript/Server Side code, and my knowledge of networking is not extensive, so details would be helpful, as would suggestions for forums which might be more suitable for this question. Thank you.

[txbakers]

You probably shouldn't allow internet access to the database, even with passwords. Unless you have a rock solid database like an AS/400.

PC Anywhere, Netmeeting, etc. are a better solution. Just create a user on the database with access to the tables you want them to see, and let them remote in to view.

[yisraelharris]

Thank you for your feedback. Some followup:

You write:

"Just create a user on the database with access to the tables you want them to see..."

To clarify the situation:

1. It is not 'them' (the client) who will have restricted access. They have full access. It is 'us' who, in providing marketing services to them, need to have restricted access to their database.

2. We are not to have access to more than a record at a time, from one single database table. It will not be known until run-time which record we need to access, hence the need for a program which will allow us to specify this at run-time.

3. You write: "You probably shouldn't allow internet access to the database."

Can you expand on that? What if we export the database to a simple comma-separated text file which can be accessed through a simple cgi script and put that on a secure server?