Remote MySQL connection via PHP file

Hi all, I've been searching around for a while, but cannot find a solution. For a project of mine, I need to keep the connection information to a MySQL server database on another server. Example remote file: <?php $user = "joe"; $pass = "1234"; ?> Example local file: <?php include "http://www.remoteserver.com/remote_file.php"; // Use variables $user and $pass somehow... ?> I've tried including the file which has the username/pass, etc information via HTTP, but this doesn't seem to work. I assume because it returns what a web browser would return if this file was loaded into one, a blank screen. I've tried using the return statement in the file which houses the information, but this seems to return a boolean value (1 or 0)... not sure what's up with that. Any help with this would be most appreciated. Thank you. Scott