I am wondering.... The idea is to have a database of scores on a server (Apache/Unix) from a small client program. The program would send periodically status of the game data, score and minor details that should be upgraded on the server database.

What do you think would be the best strategy to implement especially on the server. The simple idea would be a plain php script invoked via http GET or POST passing data as parameters but I see that at each invocation that script would connect to the database, perform the queries and stop connection. If there are many instances of the client software running around I fear for the performance of the server. Any more sophisticated ideas of what to set at the server side?

Another approach could be connecting the client program directly to the server database and update via SQL but I prefer some sort in intermediate script at the server to filter, validate and eventually distribute processing.

Thanks for any ideas.