Shawn,

You can go to sqlservermag.com or sqlservercentral.com also and you can find TIPS, TRICKS and everything related with the product.

I recommend you MS SQL Server.. the 2000 version comes with a lot of enhancements and it's very reliable.

I think you must start with an SQL course and database administration architecture & tuning. Microsoft has its own courses of that.

Regards & good luck,

Gus-