Web Database Access from Desktop Applications
By Michael J. Ross2008-05-06
Conclusion
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This tutorial demonstrates how your desktop applications can read from and update server-side databases that are otherwise inaccessible. Yet there is more that you can do along these lines: For instance, we did not address the issue of security. Obtaining the expiration date of a registration record is of little value to the malicious user. In contrast, if such a user were to somehow detect the URL that your desktop application is calling in order to update the program's expiration date, then he could set his own registration record to have an expiration date far off in the future, and thus effectively avoid having to pay to renew his license for your program. For any such sensitive data access or modification, you should encrypt the values being passed back and forth between your desktop application and the PHP scripts on your server, so hackers cannot exploit your system.
As noted earlier, this general technique is not limited to MySQL and PHP. It can be used for any server-side database, any Web scripting language that can access such a database, and any programming language that can be used on the desktop and can get the contents of Web pages — using either native functions or making use of a Web access library.
Tutorial Pages:
» Web Database Access from Desktop Applications
» Sample Database
» Database Access Script
» Desktop Application Access
» Database Updating
» Conclusion
