hannukah harry

okay, here's my conundrum...

i want to write a program. it will probably need a database type function, display pictures based on what is chosen, maybe some animations. some computations based upon user inserted data.

i haven't decided if i want this to be a stand alone computer program or accessable through a web page. i do have some programming experiance, but it's been a few years. what programming language should i use? please tell me for both a stand alone or web based.

thanks!