Experience working with remote databases

[onjegolders]

Hello people, hope you're all doing well!

Just seeing if anyone has any real world experience of working with remote databases?

Mainly in a bid to be able to keep the development process between multiple people/places that bit easier?

I'm thinking either setting up a traditional MySQL db on the server or even using a DAAS like Google SQL / Amazon?

Any thoughts much appreciated!

[kongondo]

Thanks to @Horst, I am using HeidiSQL to connect and CRUD my remote databases. It works well and is very fast, can set up users, etc. It allows to connect via various network types including SSH Tunnel, named pipe, TCP/IP, etc. You really want to use SSH though. I recently needed to import a sql dump with > 10K pages into a remote database and it warned me memory could be exhausted so gave me the option to read in the values instead. Worked a treat and quite fast! The documentation is also brilliant. Server side, I have set up a traditional MySQL install.

[onjegolders]

Thanks @kongondo, for the db itself, any recommendations? 

[Ivan Gretsky]

I am using HeidiSQL too and like it just like kongondo. But I believe the question was about the use of a remote database with a localhost installation (of a PW, probably?) So you could just copy or git clone your site and start working not even changing the db in the config.php?

If so, I would say having your own MySQL is cheaper for someone already having some kind of db hosting. But you have to set up SSH port forwarding to access your remote db (which scares me as (yet) windows user) or lower the security by allowing the access to it not only from localhost. As I could understand Google SQL is the same MySQL but with some restrictions. I do not know their benefits, so would probably go with my own MySQL instance.

[onjegolders]

Thanks Ivan, yes that's exactly what I meant. I'm coming from working on a few no-db sites where keeping in sync was just down to a git repo, the idea of a shared database sounds tempting but maybe too much hassle/risk to set it up?