Geoff,
here is what I have been able to do with MySQL and I assume would work for others.

1. Go to www.dyndns.org and sign up for the free Dynamic DNS service. This will give you a pointer to your server if it has a dynamic ip address. Most routers can be set up to send your new ip address to dyndns.org whenever your isp changes the ip address.

2. This is most important for security. Change the port address on your MySQL Server. The default is a four digit number. Change it to some five digit number. Google the port number with 'port nnnnn' to make sure it is not used by something important but any number that is five digits is, I believe, pretty much open. This is assuming you have a local server that you have compleate control over. If your server is at some hosting service then none of this will work.

3. Set the port forwarding on the router at the server end to forward that port to the server. The server ip address on the local network must be static for this to work reliably.

4. On the client end use the dyndns.org name you created and the new port address in the connection string.

This has worked for me.

>Hi John
>
>I would be interested in the checklist you mention. I assume that it would work for any database?
>
>