Question

I signed up for an account for a free web hosting.
The site provides MySQL databases and I’m trying to access it using my windows application but I can’t connect to the server. Please consider my code:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Data;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using MySql.Data.MySqlClient;

namespace MySql
{
    public partial class Form1 : Form
    {
        BackgroundWorker bg = new BackgroundWorker();
        string MyConString = "SERVER=209.51.195.117;" + // MySQL host: sql100.0fees.net
                "DATABASE=mydb;" +                      // IP: 209.51.195.117
                "UID=myusername;" +     // not really my username
                "PASSWORD=mypassword;"; // and password

        public Form1()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
        }

        private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            bg.DoWork += new DoWorkEventHandler(bg_DoWork);
            bg.RunWorkerCompleted += new RunWorkerCompletedEventHandler(bg_RunWorkerCompleted);
        }

        void bg_RunWorkerCompleted(object sender, RunWorkerCompletedEventArgs e)
        {
            button1.Enabled = true;
        }

        void bg_DoWork(object sender, DoWorkEventArgs e)
        {
            string status = String.Empty;
            MySqlConnection connection = new MySqlConnection(MyConString);
            try
            {
                connection.Open();
                if (connection.State == ConnectionState.Open)
                    lblStatus.Text = "Connected";
                else
                    lblStatus.Text = "No connection";
            }
            catch (Exception x)
            {
                lblStatus.Text = x.Message;
            }
        }

        private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            lblStatus.Text = "Connecting... please wait.";
            button1.Enabled = false;
            bg.RunWorkerAsync();
        }
    }
}

Is it possible to connect my application to an online database? Or are there errors in my code?

By the way, this the error message being produced: Unable to connect to any of the specified MySQL hosts.

Answer 1

Unless you have full control over the server, you can’t expose the mysql service to the web. This restriction is imposed by (almost; there might be exceptions) all free hosters for security reasons. Unless you provide a webservice on the server to access data, you can’t access the database remotely.