Connecting MySQL to a web portal

Right, I am currently designing a web portal for an educational organisation, I am quite competant in HTML, so the designing of web pages should be ok (i hope!), however they require the ability to manipulate data from a database via the web portal. I will be designing the database as a MySQL database, and I do have some knowledge of SQL and Java.

However the problem begins as I have no idea how to give the web portal the ability to see the information in the database, or manipulate it in anyway. I dont know what to do once I have designed the web pages, how to I call specific information from the database? Can I write SQL or Java to call it?If so will I need to download an programs to enable me to do this?

As you can see I am confused - and i hope I havent confused you reading this!

I really hope someone can help!

If i havent explained it properly and you think you can help please tell me and ill try and give you more info!

HELP!!

To connect from a web to a database, you'll need to use microsoft's asp (active server pages) or the open source PHP. One of these needs to be set up on your server, then you can write pages that will read/write to/from a database.
THere's tons of online help for both these programs, try Google. If you have questions about them, there are forums for each here at DevShed, or ask more on this thread if I haven't explained enough
HTH

While HTML and JavaScript (among things) are client side languages, you'll need a server side scripting language, like PHP , ASP (as karsh already mentioned) or Python to 'generate' the html files dynamically (with data taken from a database). Personally I use PHP for this and think it's pretty easy to learn and most ISP's support it. Within such a scripting language you can use SQL to query the database and transform the data into some html-page...

Look here for an example:
http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.mysql.php

hey guys thanks for your help! - much appreciated! although i do believe I will be back as I am now attempting to download and install php and apache! And i am sure i will come across problems!!

thanks again!

vics

Go ahead and try out php, but keep in the back of your mind that you can also create JavaBeans for database access and data manipulation.

Hope this helps.