web hosting limits: ways in ASP.NET to allow connection to remote database systems?

I recently signed up for shared web hosting with a commercial hosting 
service (GoDaddy.com) and was awed to discover that although a generous SQL 
Server database package is included, there is not an easy way to connect 
ASP.NET web applications to database servers running outside of the host's 
systems. Indeed, many ports are blocked: I think the only open ports are 80 
and 25.

Surely there is some way around this that I could manage in programming 
and/or via infrastructure magic. I'm running SQL Server 2005 on both ends, 
and have total control over the server/db server on my end.

Can someone suggest if there is a viable approach to somehow "wrap" database 
calls in a way that isn't totally slow and a total mess to work with?  Does 
the .NET platform anticipate this kind of problem and have anything 
prebuilt?

Thanks for any ideas. The best answer will probably be to have all of my 
apps and database stuff encapsulated on my host, but there's some testing 
that needs to happen between now and final deployment, and I'd prefer to 
have my database wired up for now.

-KF

Date:Sat, 4 Aug 2007 21:24:27 -0700 Author:

RE: web hosting limits: ways in ASP.NET to allow connection to remote

I am afraid that the solution here is to dump godaddy.com and find another 
hoster. It didn't take me more than 10 minutes to dump them when I found out 
I could not even make an HTTPWebRequest from the site I deployed due to their 
ridiculous restrictions.

For a comparable deal on pricing and features, without the stupid 
restrictions, you can try Gate.com or Crystaltech.com
Peter
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"kenfine@nospam.nospam" wrote:


> 
> I recently signed up for shared web hosting with a commercial hosting 
> service (GoDaddy.com) and was awed to discover that although a generous SQL 
> Server database package is included, there is not an easy way to connect 
> ASP.NET web applications to database servers running outside of the host's 
> systems. Indeed, many ports are blocked: I think the only open ports are 80 
> and 25.
> 
> Surely there is some way around this that I could manage in programming 
> and/or via infrastructure magic. I'm running SQL Server 2005 on both ends, 
> and have total control over the server/db server on my end.
> 
> Can someone suggest if there is a viable approach to somehow "wrap" database 
> calls in a way that isn't totally slow and a total mess to work with?  Does 
> the .NET platform anticipate this kind of problem and have anything 
> prebuilt?
> 
> Thanks for any ideas. The best answer will probably be to have all of my 
> apps and database stuff encapsulated on my host, but there's some testing 
> that needs to happen between now and final deployment, and I'd prefer to 
> have my database wired up for now.
> 
> -KF
> 
> 
> 
>