Question : Data web programming on a $0 budget

I am new to web development, but am an experienced VB/Oracle person. Here's what I want to do:

Write web pages that access data. I don't care where I store the data as long as I don't have to spend any money obtaining the data storage. (i.e. MS Access won't work - I'm too cheap to buy the Access program) So I'm thinking I'll store the data in datafiles. They're not proprietary & cost no money.

Whatever solution you propose would need to be able to run on the webserver I am using, unless you have a free webserver that goes along with it. Any ideas? My webserver is the freeware AnalogX SimpleServerWWW running on a Windows NT machine.

Bottom line - can't spend a dime.

Answer : Data web programming on a $0 budget

Apache Webserver (free) - Arguably the best webserver available:
<a href="http://httpd.apache.org/">http://httpd.apache.org/</a>

MySQL an EXCELLENT free database - Many commercial websites (including NASA) are running MySQL:
<a href="http://www.mysql.org/downloads/index.html">http://www.mysql.org/downloads/index.html</a>

PHP for server-side scripting language:
<a href="http://www.php.net">www.php.net</a>

All of the above are free, easily obtainable, user-friendly, stable, and used by some Very big commercial sites such as:

<a href="http://www.mysql.org/news/article-85.html">Yahoo</a>

<a href="http://www.mysql.org/news/article-51.html">Nasa</a>

See who's running Apache:
<a href="http://www.netcraft.com/survey/">Netcraft</a>

Good luck