Not sure how you are accessing your remote db, but it seems odd that it should open a connection before one is required. The settings.php shouldn’t cause a connection to the db, it just defines the connection stirng.

It seems that when set_active is called then the conection gets opened.   If that only happens in  a cron hook then that should only happen then.  Where are your set_active calls coming into play here?

Dave

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From: support-bounces@drupal.org [mailto:support-bounces@drupal.org] On Behalf Of Ms. Nancy Wichmann
Sent: Monday, July 11, 2011 11:36 AM
To: support drupal
Subject: [support] Dynamic remote database access

I know that the "standard" way to access another database is to include it in $db_url in the settigs.php file. This has the undesireable effect that the remote database must be available all the time. In my case, we only need to access the remote DB a few times a week via a cron job, where much better error handling is available. I haven't yet found a way (I'm still searching DO) to do this. Does anyone have any good ideas? This is Drupal 6 - don't bother suggesting an upgrade. Replication is probably not an option because we shouldn't have access to, nor need, everything in the remote DB.

Nancy

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. -- Dr. Martin L. King, Jr.