Connecting to a MySQL database at a hosting provider

[John Allijn]

Hi,

I' writing an iPad app. I want the app to get some shared data from a MySQL database. I've seen scripts for that and locally they all work great. 
However, I've got three websites, each with a different hosting provider, and they all have installed MySQL in such a way that you can only access the database from  within a webpage running at the hosting provider. For example with a PHP script.

I guess I'n not the first one who wants to pull data from a DB on the web :) 

Is there a way around that? like a special PHP script, or another kind of generally used interface that works as a server-side to my client-app?

The database itself is quite easy. just first/last name, email, a line of free format text and a date. I want to test if the user exists (is in the database), has paid his subscription (the date is an expiration date), and a system message specifically for that user (the free text field)

any suggestions????

best regards,
John.