I assume java CAN interact with SQl... I haven't done it so I can't say if its easy or not. I know vb can super easily...

Here is a good website and some advice
What Shall I Learn First In Programming ?

Djeezs all those opinions.
For looking what could be the best one, go to Tiobe programming index.

There you can see the "usage" of programming languages.

For programming in general, I recommend:

==> C++ (programming in general, most (>95%) programs and all the commercial games are still written in C/C++ as far as I know)

To give an idea of where C is used in:
OpenOffice, Linux, Paint.Net, windows, Gimp, photoshop, firefox, Pidgin, google earth, inkscape, mediacoder, Filezilla, free download manager, codeblocks = ide, Visual studio, Java Virtual Machine and Python compilers


==> PHP (scripts and dynamic webpages)

==>SQL (it isn't really a programming language but a standard for making databases)


And if you want to learn even more:

=>Java (Not my favourite because you need the JVM but it's very popular)

=>Python (Good very high language, but you don't have to write so much as in C is also extendable/blendable with C++ or java)

And if you still haven't got enough:

=> Perl

And then just all the programming languages of tiobe in the top 20 and the top 50 and then the top 1000.