Local XML file or External MySQL database?

[wataka]

I'm working on a client's PHP website which is hosted through the original company who built the site. There's a section on the site where a user clicks on a country name from a list, the parameters are posted in the URL and the database is queried using these parameters and the holiday packages from that country are displayed on the page. All standard stuff.Now, as the company who host the website won't give me direct access to the db (understandable, I could be anyone) but want to charge my client quite an extortionate amount for adding a couple of updates, I'm trying to come up with an alternative solution. These are:1) Create a MySql database on my own webhost and access it externally2) Create an XML file and query that instead, using PHP and XSLT.Just to clarify, I'll be manually updating the data myself, my client won't ever have more than 30 pacakges, so it's quite sustainable.So my question is which should I choose? I'm worried about the speed and security of accessing an MySQL db remotely (and I'm not even sure I can do it with my web host), but would a local XML file be as insecure?Thanks in advance!Gem