Are there any best practices or security considerations to keep in mind when accessing a database on a different server from a web server using PHP?

When accessing a database on a different server from a web server using PHP, it is important to ensure that your database connection is secure to prevent unauthorized access or data breaches. One best practice is to use secure connections such as SSL to encrypt the data transmitted between the web server and the database server. Additionally, always sanitize user input to prevent SQL injection attacks and use prepared statements to prevent against SQL injection vulnerabilities.

<?php
// Database connection settings
$servername = "database_server";
$username = "database_user";
$password = "database_password";
$database = "database_name";

// Create a secure connection to the database using PDO with SSL
$options = array(PDO::MYSQL_ATTR_SSL_CA => '/path/to/ca-cert.pem');
$dsn = "mysql:host=$servername;dbname=$database";
$pdo = new PDO($dsn, $username, $password, $options);

// Sanitize user input and use prepared statements to prevent SQL injection
$user_input = $_POST['user_input'];
$stmt = $pdo->prepare("SELECT * FROM table WHERE column = :user_input");
$stmt->bindParam(':user_input', $user_input);
$stmt->execute();
?>