Connecting to Remote Database

Hello,

I am currently setting up a network of client websites using WordPress Multisite. In order to avoid having to export and update the live database after developing the site locally, I decided to setup the wp-config file to connect to the live database and use that while developing. I have two questions:

1) Is this the best way to to utilize the live database and avoid having to export and import each time.

2) Is there a way to speed up the connection to the database while accessing it remotely? Currently it is very slow and even the little bit of content population that we have to do on local dev for our sites before we populate the site live is agonizingly slow.