1&1 hosting for Windows, question about ASP.NET connection to MSSQL

[YoungGun21]

Signed up for the 1&1 Dual Advanced for Windows last night. I think it will be great in the long run, but we found out that in the short term we basically made it really hard on ourselves. Found out that the ONLY way to connect to the MSSQL Databases they give us is through ASP.NET scripts run on their server. That means that we can't use our Perl scripts we had written to automatically make a new table, pull the data, and insert it. That also means that I can't connect in Visual Studio to use that as a Datasource to bind data to objects... which is essentially the entire website.

What are my options here? I have to have the data available to use it to develop the website. I know I could make a copy of the database and host it locally on my computer, but then how to I change the bindings to work with the one at the server? I know about having two web.config files (one for server, one for home), but my question is what about all of the datasources (probably 5 or more per page, maybe 30 total) that I have inputted that pull either all, a few lines, or just one line from my whichever table I need to use?

Is 1&1 even a good choice? Is this common to restrict access to the MSSQL like this?

 

[WannaFly]

What are my options here? I have to have the data available to use it to develop the website. I know I could make a copy of the database and host it locally on my computer, but then how to I change the bindings to work with the one at the server? I know about having two web.config files (one for server, one for home), but my question is what about all of the datasources (probably 5 or more per page, maybe 30 total) that I have inputted that pull either all, a few lines, or just one line from my whichever table I need to use?

All your datasources should retrieve their connections from the web.config - use the same connection and just change it whether its on the server or on your computer. They layout of your tables and columns should be the exact same between your home computer and the hosted version.

Is 1&1 even a good choice? Is this common to restrict access to the MSSQL like this?

I don't know much about 1&1, but from what I know this is a VERY common security restriction - otherwise people could very easily brute force usernames and passwords to gain access to your database. I'm not sure but SOME providers might allow you to specify your IP that can access it, but that would only work if it's static.