Hi There.

I'm just hoping someone can answer a question for me, as although i have been a IT Network Administrator for a long time, I know very little about web design/database design.

I'm currently in the process of setting up a website to will contain a very large amount of data so I'm seeking advice on the best type of database to use for this website.

The site will be a financial site containing information on prices of products for each country that I have information on. I want to have the site setup so you can select a country from a dropdown box that will then autofilter the available products for that country. Once the product is selected, I am wanting web viewers to be able to select another country and product from separate dropdown boxes to compare the prices of the product for each country. Although the options sound basic at the moment, I would like it to be more complex going forward so prices of a product today can be compared with the price of the same product 10 years ago etc.

As this data is likely to change a lot (inflation etc), I will hopefully be using a live feed after the site gets going, so can someone please recommend a good database system to use for this sort of information. I have been advised My SQL is good but can slow down the site if there is too much information in the database.

I might not be able to use a live feed of this data for a while so if the data remains historical for a while and required manual data entry, would this make a difference on the type of database I use?

Thanks heaps for you help and let me know if you require more information.
Cheers, Jeremy