Are we talking ots etc? phpmyadmin is needed to make a connection from php to the server, not phpmyadmin but you need smth that can take info and give info from PHP to and from C++.
If you are talking about not using mysql at all, you need to change the sources to use xml files for characters and accounts etc, and the same for the homepage, loading and writing to xml files.
Phpmyadmin is pretty much a guid, like tfs, you have buttons etc, you can at the same time do alot of things without phpmyadmin as mentioned above.