I'd say a web service in between gives you far better control³. If you expose the DB credentials in your app you'd at least run into the risks of DOS attacks.

Since most queries just return a nested data structure, using a JSON transport layer in between should be fine.²

I'd start googling for REST and SQL.°

I don't know the nature of your centralized data, but propably you'll even only need some static JSON files which are updated regularly from SQL?

update

°) especially ODATA

²) kind of

• -> post request named query
• -> + bind variables (placeholders)
• server: executes prepared statement
• runs ->fetchall_hashref or ->fetchall_arrayref
• to_json($ref)
• <- JSON
• client: $ref=from_json(JSON)

³) and HTTP(S) means far less problems with firewalls.

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