No, Peter, that's not it at all. Michael; I wasn't asking for "...an
application design, database design" etc; merely advice on starting
points/ info sources from those with more experience.
I shant lecture overly on the unuseful nature of cynical sarcasm (save
when its genuinely funny!) when it comes to pedagogy: I am interested
in others experience as a means to educate myself, save time and not
reinvent the wheel. I hope and believe that's roughly what these
groups are for.
Fortunately, I received some useful advice here if anyone is following
this thread looking for the same stuff:

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/mic...1987f59cb8b7f#

From a few days poking around and trying things out it seems that the
(low) level of plain- english support makes a MySQL db for use with
asp.net a tricky proposition for anything other than a very
experienced programmer. I'm going to try and use MS SQLServer.

Good luck all.
Dan