what is the best setup to use if you want to publish your site to an isp

i want to use a ole db connection but if i set that up for my site to point to the database at the isp i will have to be on line to view the live data. Also it doesn't seem like a good idea to test/design on your live database.

if i set up a simple dsn connection to point to a test database on IIS would i then simply change the connection to an OLE DB one for the site before i ftp upload it.

and what would i put in the application server section in the define site dialog?

all the books and tutorials seem to think you just want to run a web site on your local machine through IIS and don't cover designing locally to then upload to an isp.

thx for any help