storing data to pass across the net

[drsmooth]

im working on a game right now, its a simple rpg where you have a charater with stats and you can message and attack other players online. my problem is what would be the best way to share the information across the net? i set up the whole game with mysql databases and it works great but as discussed here earlier, most web hosts consider remote access to databases a security risk. If that is the case i suppose i would like to try to avoid it...

any suggesstions would be greatly appreciated
thanks,
ken

[pronerd]

Remote access to a database in the situation described would be a really bad idea.

The clients running on the users machines should be accessing a service on the host that can then access the database locally. So for example the clients might connect to an app server like Tomcat or JBoss on the host. Then Tomcat or JBoss would connect to the database, and then respond to the clients.

[drsmooth]

Remote access to a database in the situation described would be a really bad idea.

im quickly realizing the badness of that idea, but i am having a hard time grasping why...possibly because i lack a lot of knowledge about this stuff but could someone please explain what makes it so bad?

thanks alot,
ken