Developer Forum

Hi,

I'm in the process of developing a psychology project that is hurling me beyond static HTML and personal Web space sites. I'm currently deepening my shallow Studio MX skills and looking for a Web host. Before choosing a host, I need to decide which tools (besides MX) I'll be using over the course of my project. In particular, I'm facing the choice of server host (ASP, .NET, ColdFusion, PHP) and database.

While I'm comfortable with Microsoft products (I'm on XP Pro and use Office Pro which includes Access) and, of course, have ColdFusion, I'm being torn by the popularity, plentiful features, and cheaper prices offered with Unix servers (as opposed to Windows servers) that don't support ColdFusion. But my project's relational database (currently in Access) is quite complex and will only become more so as my project develops.

Here are my questions:
What are the strengths and weaknesses of my server host choices (ASP, .NET, ColdFusion, PHP)?
Can MySQL do anything Access can do? Can it handle a complex relational database?
Should I be considering things I'm not?

Many thanks and kind regards,
George