I am trying to connect data (that is organized in an excel spread sheet) and connect it to a database. I want to do it in such a way that will allow me to search different quarrys (ie; temperature, frequency..ect). I am not familiar with databases and I don't where to start. If anyone has any suggestions that would be great!!
Thank you.

Export data from Excel (save as... CSV format), then create a MySQL database (MySQL is free), create a table, make some changes and import that ASCII .CSV file via PHPMyAdmin (very easy to install).

Then you can use Perl, PHP, etc. to pull data from the MySQL database.

You may consider also MS Access (best bet) or FoxPro.

I've had loads of hassel in the past trying to upgrade FoxPro databases to newer versions of FoxPro. This may just have been unlucky for me but it has made me wonder about foxPro for long term storage

Visual FoxPro is pretty good as a long storage "efficiency" solution.