Information About Migrating Databases

If you have a Shared Hosting account with one or more databases, you may receive an email indicating the server hosting the database has or will change. The change is a necessary part of our continuing effort to improve product quality. Once all of your databases are upgraded, not only will your account be hosted on the most advanced servers available for your type of account, you will be able to take advantage of new product features.

The email will contain information needed to ensure that your Website's applications continue to be able to connect to the database after it moves.

The information in this article contains best practices for configuring your database applications. So the information applies even if you have not received an email indicating your database is moving. Following these practices will help ensure any future upgrades are as seamless as possible.

When your Website's applications connect to the database they must provide credentials and identifying information for the database. The usual practice is to format this information into a database connection string.

The credentials are the username and password you selected when creating the database. The identifying information consists of the database name you selected and an address for the database server that hosts the database. Typically the database server address is the value of a CNAME, or canonical name record that resolves to the IP address of the database server. A database name contains letters and possibly numbers. For example the server name will be similar to mysql123456.secureserver.net or HostedDB1.db.1234567.hostedresource.com.

Whereas the IP address of the database server contains only numbers and will be similar to 10.10.20.30.

To ensure the move is as seamless as possible, it is critical that your application code uses the name of the database server to connect to the database. If the IP address of the server is used, the application will fail to connect to the database after it has moved.

If your application uses the IP address, modify the database connection string to contain the database server name. If you received an email indicating the database server name is changing, the database server name is included in the email. This update must be completed within the time frame indicated in the email to avoid loss of database connectivity on your Website.

If you did not receive an email about the database server name changing, you can find the database server name for all of your databases in the Hosting Control Panel and database administration tools.

The method for determining the value your Website's application uses to address the database server depends on the application. If you have the source code for the application you can examine it to locate where it obtains the address and verify it uses the server name. If you don't have the source code for the application you can review the documentation or contact the vendor to determine where the address is stored and verify the server name is used.

If your database was set up with a DSN and your applications use the DSN, the DSN already contains the correct server name. No action is required on your part to update Website code that uses DSNs.

If your database is an Access database, no action is required on your part to update Website code that uses an Access database.

If you have installed applications from Value Applications then, the application already uses the server name to connect to the database. If you received an email indicating the server name changed or would like to verify the connection string contains the correct server name, the location of the connection strings for the Value Applications applications are described in What are the connection strings for my application's database?.