Ok for those I missed on here sending an email to here is what I sent to a couple of people on how I would go about starting to get an idea on java and learning to program your own database :

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Have you done any programming before ?
Do you know Java or HTML or SQL ?

If not don't worry it isn't hard. Just takes a bit of dedication to learn the first bit then its easy.

If you are interested. Go to http://java.sun.com

Download the SDK for 1.4.2 as its the most commonly used java language.
Its available at : http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/download.html

Read the intstallation instructions for installing as they are fairly important.

Then run through the first few tutorials at :
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/index.html

Especially focus on Getting Started, Learning the Java Language, Essential Java Classes and Collections. Don't worry about Swing or Deployment .. they can come later if you want to learn them.

The first thing you should do is do a "Hello World" Program. The tutorials will show you how to do it. Its always nice to get the program printing something out.

If you have any questions send them my way. Once you have covered the above let me know and I will go through downloading from the web with you and also setting up the Database and how to put data into it.

My email address is aussiegreyhound @ yahoo com au