First real client and need help.

This firm is paying me to install a database which would store production figures ect. I am using PHP to create the certain scripts they need to use this DB effectively.

I learned about servers using Linux and I am building it on their server with Windows Server 2003. The company's inhouse IT guy has only ever used Windows and is running some type of Citrix Firewall.

This firewall prevents anyone from the outside world (not on the local area) to not be able to pull data from the DBs to put into an Excel sheet.

The IT guy has been kind of stand offish to me when I'm trying to tell him I need certain ports to be connectable from the outside world. Without this, the company will have to manually email themselves from the server (or use some sort of FTP[but once again no ports are open]). So its going to be a hassle for the accountants to manipulate data on their computer's end.

I have a meeting with them tomorrow to show them some functionality and I want to convince them to allow me to make the server connectable from the outside world.

Any advice is appreciated and I could really use it :P

You don't have to convince them to allow you to do anything; you just have to explain the options to them and let them choose:
(a) you open ports X, Y and Z and then you will be able to access the data using steps 1, 2, 3; otherwise:
(b) you leave the ports closed and have to use steps 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, etc. to access the data.

Alternatively, (b) might be something like: you leave the ports closed, and you can only perform steps 1, 2, 3 from the office; you won't be able to perform them remotely.

Obviously if there are security implications to opening ports X, Y and Z you will want to explain that up front. Otherwise their IT person will explain it to them, and that will make you look bad. You might also want to evaluate the situation and make sure it's actually reasonable to open those ports.

You could also offer alternatives if they want (a) but don't want to open the ports;
(c) you can buy/rent a second server and run it outside the firewall
(d) you can set up a VPN



This sentence doesn't make a lot of sense to me; a firewall wouldn't be aware of whether the data is being put into an Excel sheet or not. Are you looking to just open the database server port to the outside?

I am looking to open ports 80(http), 3306(MySQL), and maybe open another for FTP. They database will store the production figures and I am trying to create PHP scripts that would pull the columns from MySQL to a .XLS, but without being able to connect to the server via HTTP it just can't be done to my knowledge.

I appreciate your input very much. I am rather new when it comes to this stuff so I may be using improper sytax when referring to some things. Thanks for your input eoreo, I think tomorrow I will show them what front-end functionality I have and convince them opening the ports would help smooth the file transfers.