searching an internet database

i was wondering if anybody could help me
in a site that i am making i would like to have a 'advanced search' option which would let the user enter search data and search a database and pull back results and other information from that result such as the whole row of information. what program (filetype) would i use for the database and how would i make it so it pulled back the rows of results
thanks in advance
a noob

The way you are making your site and/or the server where you are going to host it may restrict the options you have.

First of all, what type of server are you going to use?

It could happen that the server that you are going to use cannot support some or all of the functionalities you want for your site.