Hi KICC,
No I never used that method. I've always used a service either in PHP or ASP to interact with the databases.
The company where I work strictly forbids database server to accept connections from the outside world. Is a matter of security politics, each company has their own, and there is no point in discussing this matter here, as it does not help to solve your problem.
Even using services, all requests and responses are encripted to ensure that sniffers wont easily get their hands on what is going trough the networks.
So first you have to decide in wich way want to access the database, than I'm sure it will be easier to get help, although the forum examples are, in my opinion easy to follow, specially the ones related with acessing the databases using a webservice. I really don't know why you call it "old technique" as it is the one more used in the internet.