OMFG whoever said Oracle Lite, was that a joke? I've not used Lite, but I've used oracle, its no beginner's database, is Lite really that much easier?
DEFINITELY a beginner should be starting with MS Access. Grab a book, its pretty easy to setup and do some simple things with. I would also recommend an NT based server and just use .asp (active server pages) to interface with the DB. Sure you can learn things like PHP, but asp is really dominating the field pretty well, and you won't have a problem getting a server to support it - plus its imminently useable to gain employment.
I also highly recommend this particular tutorial for you:
http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/backend/databases/tutorials/tutorial3.html
Also the beauty of ASP, even with VBscipt, is that since everything is run server side it works fine in nutscrape and IE both, so no compatibility worries.
Brooks