How do you create a database

ergh that'll learn me to read your ENTIRE POST before replying...

you can create in access yes. get a book from the o'reilly family if someone else doesnt suggest something better. Uploading the database will depend on your webhost - as the ODBC connection will likely need to be recreated each time you do this.

pheeeeeeew that one's a minefield man. Access... where do you start? I'm sure they've changed it since I started in this game but it used to have major issues with having more than 5 users accessing it concurrently. I believe it still suffers from the problem of opening the database directly while your CF app tries to use it - Access locks the database file so only that user can view/edit/whatever at that point in time.

used to have an issue where updating the access file in your development environment, if you then went and re-uploaded it to the live server, you had to recreate the ODBC connection. (probably not such an issue now as I think CF's inbuilt dsn management stuff makes that easier (someone correct me if i'm wrong there!))

Ideally, for a database you're learning with, look into something like MySQL - it's free, easy to install, the DB tools are relatively straightforward and there's some nice free tools for it. Heaps of docos at www.mysql.org . Be aware though, that whichever database you use, they all have their own extra little commands within their SQL implementations - so if you switch databases mid project for whatever reason this may be something you need to be aware of.

But as to the process of creating a database - most DB tools nowadays are roughly the same:
1) filemenu (or somewhere like that) there should be a Create Database option - click it and follow the prompts, naming your database etc NOTE: WHATEVER DATABASE YOU USE, SEARCH GOOGLE FOR A LIST OF RESTRICTED WORDS THAT MAY NOT BE USED IN DATABASE/TABLE/COLUMN/VIEW/TRIGGER/etc naming - also no spaces in names, only punctuation you should use is underscore.

2) if you were not prompted to create a user account for the database - do so now, usually there will be a USERS option somewhere near where the new database shows in your interface (assuming you arent doing this over command line). create a new user - name it whatever (remember point about naming above) - give it a password - remember these details, you'll need them for the CF Administrator's datasource setup. assign the user to the new database (usually in the user creation process but sometimes you're required to go back to the database itself and find a users section in it's options) - assign the user whatever permissions you need - read, write, delete, update, whatever.

3) open the database up and add a new table to it, name it whatever -you should be taken to the point where you create columns at this stage - give your table an ID column - numeric/int - autoincrement - and set it to primary key... from here on create whatever columns you need, reference your chosen database's docos for descriptions of the column datatypes and assess them to see which ones meet your needs.

note, some of the above bits may be arse-about depending on your DB/toolset.

Cheers