Database server

Is this on my hosting server

[Adam5000]

Greetings all

I'm trying to create what I'm calling a "Password gateway." My website has both a guest area and a members area, and for the members area I'm trying to create a database to store the usernames and passwords (finally in encrypted form).

I've read about something called a "Database server" and found a definition of

"A database server is a computer program that provides database services to other computer programs or computers"

Is this something that is already on the server that hosts my site?

Help!

[optik]

It's very likely you will have access to a database or at least be able to install one with your host, the best thing to do is go to there site or your admin panel and have a look around.

If your server is a Linux machine you need to look out for MySQL if your on a Windows machine it could be MySQL or Access.

As your new to server databases you probably will want to use software to visualise the database so you can see the internal workings of it rather than it all being theory.

PHPMyAdmin is a good choice for MySQL there are equivalents for Access as well.

If you have a choice I would go for MySQL personally because it is more widely used amongst developers.

[Adam5000]

Thanks a bunch optik. I contacted my hosting service and I'm hooked up with MySql and they have PHPMyAdmin installed to manage it.