Writing a MYSQL backed Java Back end Service for Dummies

So I want to do the simplest possible thing.

Assume I have a MYSQL enabled hosting service.

In it, I have a database storyland and a table story-->(id, title, text)

I only know how to write Java programs in eclipse that run on my computer and do homework assignments well...:)

Now I want to

1) write a Java program that is hosted on my server that would compute and return (for exampl开发者_运维技巧e) the number of characters of text stored in the entire MYSQL database

Then I also only have experience with writing PHP programs that talk directly to MYSQL via forms e.t.c but now i want to

2) be able to display a page index.php that says

echo "Welcome to storyland, there are $textcount characters of text in all stories here";

where $textcount is the number returned by the java service.

I would appreciate really specific answers for this really "simple" specific example..to get me started. I'd also appreciate answers/resources that do not lean too heavily on external libraries/software since i want to be able to understand how those libraries work to be able to decide how to use them in future.

Thanks!

1. A design thought: I'd be tempted to have one more column - size, and have that precomputed for each blob of text, so you wouldn't have to calculate that (which might be expensive to count a blob > varchar size). Then I'd just issue a SUM over that column and be done: SELECT SUM(size) from mytable;

2. That would make the db work real simple, a simple INSERT and SELECT system really.

You need to have your own server, or a server that supports java, else this is not possible.

Even if you have a server that supports java, why do this with java when you can do it with php, the bottleneck will probably be the database anyhow.