[development] Remote db, site offline

I thought this would be straight forward, but alas I am confused. I typically have my database on my local machine, but I'm in a situation where I need to move my database to a remote server so multiple people can be developing at the same time. Drupal install and files are all local to each developer. Problem is, I can't get my local settings file to work with the remote database. In my settings file I've updated my $db_url string to use the remote db. I'm able to connect to the db via command line or MySQL GUI app using the same credentials as my settings file, but Drupal does seem to want to use the values in $db_url. Are there any cache settings or something else in the database that would restrict me from doing this? Jeff