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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-14T15:33:26+00:00

I’m working on a Swing GUI application that among other things, functions as a

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I’m working on a Swing GUI application that among other things, functions as a database client that reads and writes to a MySQL database.
Currently I implemented the interaction with the database using JDBC (as instructed here: http://www.kitebird.com/articles/jdbc.html), which directly connects to the database by specifying the explicit database host name (IP address).

This works fine as long as I run the GUI client application on a PC which is a part of the organization’s local network, and thus I can reach the MySQL database by specifying the IP address of the machine it’s deployed on.

But I wonder what is the proper way of implementing the interaction with the database if the GUI client application to be run on a computer that’s outside of the organization’s network (communicating over the internet)?

The two ways I could think of are:

  1. Configure the database server machine to be available on MySQL’s default port (3306) over the internet, and then I would be able to continue connecting to the database from the GUI client application by specifying the database server’s IP address.

  2. Create a web service (probably REST API based), that would run on the database server machine, and function as a middleman between the GUI client and the MySQL database.

I suspect the correct way is the second option, using a web service, but I don’t have any experience in implementing any.

So my bottom line question is:

What is the correct way to implement communication with a database over the internet, and if it involves using web services, where should I start? What are the common libraries or frameworks that are used for implementing such things?

Thanks a lot to anyone who had the patience to read all this.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Sounds like a big task, and I’m not sure there are any easy answers. You most certainly should not expose connections to your database to the internet, as that would be a powerful vector for potential attackers.

    A web service would be a very good solution to this. The Java standard for RESTful webservices is JCR (JSR-170), the reference implementation for which is Apache Jackrabbit (http://jackrabbit.apache.org/). Its pretty easy to set up, and there are various options for securing such a service.

    Edit: No thats wrong! I meant JAX-RS and Jersey (http://jersey.java.net/). Sorry!

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