Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 with ASP coldfusion and PHP search?

I am working through Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 with ASP coldfusion and PHP with the intent of creating a data base site that primarily requires a search engine on the index page. The search page in the book uses specific search criteria ensuring that there will always be a match to the data base but I need to create an input text field search engine. My Q, if there is no data within the data base that match the variable, will it return with an error requiring an argument in the code to respond to no matching data. Hopefully there are comprehensive online recourses for these search engines as they are so common. I am a complete newby to all aspects of web development and code so it will need to be a thorough explanation, an idiots guide. ANY HELP GREATLY APPRECIATED