the big picture

Hi all: I am new to java and database, so someone please explain to me some/any of the followings. What I have: 1. Netscape suitespot, which includes enterprise server with livewire. 2. Several sun boxes with solaris 2.5 3. they are all running on a ethernet network, and I can throw a nt or win95 in there if I have to, preferably not though. What I want to accomplish: develope web applications which extracts data from a database. My Questions: 1. I believe I can either do this using javascript from netscape (the livewire stuff) or using java with jdbc, is that correct? if so, which one is better? 2. I believe livewire from netscape supports four different kind of database servers, sybase, db2, oracle, informix, which one is better? cheaper? eaiser to use? 3. For anyone of those databases, exactly what do I need to set it up? I need a database server? a client? both? 4. Should I put the database and the web server on the same box or different box? if so, how does that influence the setup process? 5. Is it also true I can setup a odbc handler on my sun boxes and talk with any odbc compliant database such as access acroos the network? if so, are there any advantages in doing so? also, where do I obtain those odbc handlers? 6. what's a sql server? how is that different from other database servers? can I use that in my unix box and make it work with java? If someone can help me answer any/all of the above questions, I'd really appreciate that. Please reply to yan@wwisp.com. Thank You. yan