Strong database connectivity with secure user accounts is of utmost important. The “richness” of the applications is secondary.

I can write decent interfaces with PHP/DHTML/JavaScript but I am not familiar with how to best secure them.

So far I’ve tried out:

Oracle Apex. I like it. The smallest Oracle database is free to use but the hosts that offer it are somewhat expensive. Running it myself would require me to be more familiar with web server security, something else that I’m not up to par on.

Adobe Flex. I really like the looks of this. The downside of course, is that users need to have Flash installed.

Any suggestions?

If you have pointers which might help me learn to better secure my own internet applications or webservers (I’ve only used Apache in the past), please post those as well. Perhaps writing my own application or using Apex will be the best bet if I can learn how to better secure things.

Thanks!