building remote connections

Here is what I am wanting to do. I have a VB application that is loaded off site on a client's machine. The client has no access currently to our server. What I need to do is implement a new function in this application that will connect to our server and perform a SQL query to return information to the VB application. If anyone has any ideals how I would go about doing this or any websites that you could point me to I would GREATLY appreciate it.

Thank you for your responses,
Shannon Hunter
Aperture-CVO
shunter@aperture-cvo.com