Accessing remote MySQL data using c#

Question

Hello,

I work on a Joomla web site, installed on a MySQL database and running on IIS7. It's all working fine.

I now need to add functionality that lets (Joomla-)registered users change some configuration data. Though I haven't done this yet, it looks straightforward enough to do with Joomla. The data is private so all external access will be done through HTTPS.

I also need an existing c# program, running on another machine, to read that configuration data. Sure enough, this data access needs to be as fast as possible. The data will be small (and filtered by query), but the latency should be kept to a minimum. A short-term, client-side cache (less than a minute, in case a user updates his configuration data) seems like a good idea.

I have done practically zero database/asp programming so far, so what's the best way of doing that last step? Should the c# program access the database 'directly' (using what? LINQ?) or setup some sort of Facade (SOAP?) service? If a service should be used, should it be done through Joomla or with ASP on IIS?

Thanks

Answer 1

I ended up using a WCF service façade written in c# that returns the data from the database. The service only exposes a couple of functions that query parameters as arguments. The SQL queries are not exposed, nor is the database connection string. The WCF service uses the mysql connector/net 6.3.1 to talk to mysql. The WCF service is accessible only over https, and requires a username & password.