I am experimenting with the idea of creating methods of publishing (and editing) the museum project’s database. One of the options I am currently looking at would be great for remote access by authorized individuals. It involves creating two pieces of software: a single-purpose web server and a remote client application. The web server would directly read and write the same database used by the desktop version, but it would be more secure than most web apps because it will only respond to requests that originate from the remote client application. Any attempts to access the data from a browser or ftp client would fail.
Smaller organizations could use their broadband connection to allow staff members to work remotely by making the single-purpose server listen on a port other than the usual port 80 (which is probably blocked by their ISP) and hooking up with a dynamic DNS service.
I should have some preliminary results available soon. I am also looking at some more traditional ways to allow users to publish the database online - these will be in addition to the client/server idea.
Check it out at http://www.musarch.com