I want to set up a database service on a website.  Specifically, I
want my website users to be able to send a keyword to a text DB on my
site and get a list of all the terms stored in the DB that are
associated with that keyword.  (Keyword=animal, output=dog, etc.) This
means I need to find a web hosting service that can support something
like a MS Access DB, create the DB, upload it to that service, and put
user-driven hooks in my sitepages that will make the DB perform as
desired.  Alas, this is way over my head.  a) I don't know how to make
an Access DB do what I want, and if I did I don't know how to set up
the DB so that people coming to my website can massage it. I need help
thinking about how to solve these problems.  I am not asking for a
total solution that embraces all the details -- just an overview of
the important issues and how to approach them.  If I need detailed
help I'll ask another question for more money.

Why don't you use mysql? MySQL server is provided by any host service
and is pretty fast.

And how would I do that?  What do I need to know and how do I learn it?

in fact, you need a simple network stat functions for keywords. I can help you.

It seems like you want to be able to provide visit a serial of word
after user enter a keyword in a input box and click on the "GO" or
"Enter" button on your webpage.

If this is true, you will need the following knowlege for it
1) ASP (Active Server Page) or other similar technology eg. JSP -- I
assume you use such technology to create the website.  Because a
static page can not communicate with server.

2) ADO (ActiveX Data Object) -- either ADO.NET or earlier version of
it, depends on wether you adopt the .NET or not.  This technology
would help your webpage to communicate (connect to database, query
against database, and return needed data from the database) with your
database (MS Access, SQL Server, mySQL, Oracle, etc)

3) SQL (Structured Query Language) -- Help you query data from your database.

* MS Access is not a real database, but it does provide enough
features for new developer to practice.  To use it as a database, it
has the following limitations
1) Limited size -- it has size limit of 2GB, so if you data will go
over that limit, you may not want to use it

2) Short of index service -- Indexing is a very important technology
for querying database.  It would improve the search speed
significantly, but Access does not provide this.

3) Short of Triggers and store procedures features. 

This seems complicated, but actually it is quite simple.

BlueSagi
20060903