Zoho Creator has a free version that allows you to have up to five databases. For people just starting out with structured data on the Web, it’s a good choice. I wish they had the ability to create a search form similar to the data entry form without having to code and use their API, but maybe someday.

I’m a big Ruby on Rails fan. While there definitely an investment in time to learn, IMHO it scales up to more complicated projects better than PHP/MySQL. For a simple application with one table of data and a couple of queries, Rails is probably overkill. But the ease of interacting with the database and dealing with many-to-many relationships are big attractions if you’ve got a more complicated app. So are the human readability of the code (a big Ruby plus) and the rigid structure, making code maintenance (whether in groups or just looking at your own stuff you wrote half a year ago) less painful. I’m an editor, not a developer, yet I coded what I consider a fairly sophisticated application (for a writer) using Ruby on Rails; it’s for local events listings, you can see it at Framinghamevents.com.

FYI I reviewed four online databases for Computerworld.com this spring. Coghead is another database you didn’t mention that I looked, although it was fairly complicated to learn and didn’t seem to offer much more than other, easier services. When blist comes out of beta, I hope to review that as well.