I am hoping to build a website that accesses a database (possibly Amazon's SimpleDB, but perhaps not) for both presenting query results and adding additional data to the database. I hope to eventually build a sleek AJAX interface as well.

I have been told that Python would be an excellent choice for its ease of use, but I wanted to get the opinion of others about whether this would be the right language to use. I realize, given that I'm posting this in the VB forum, that you might likely suggest that. I have the most experience with VB as opposed to Python, Ruby, and Java.

Overall, could VB be a good choice for this type of project? I am assuming that the choice of any of these languages is mutually exclusive; they would all perform the same function in their own way, so there is need to only choose one? What might you suggest as the advantages and disadvantages of using VB for this site?

If you're talking AJAX, you're probably talking VB.NET in the microsoft world.

I would say go with Java or C#. The syntax will take you a little while to get used to, but you'll be better equipped to jump to other platforms later if need be.

All languages you mentioned can make short work of displaying query results to web users.

if you want to use AJAX then you need a server side language and a client (browser) language

in the browser that usually means Javascript
for the server side scripting there are many different languages including the likes of PHP, ASP, Python amongst others
theres .NET

another option may be Google Web Toolbox, which purports to simplify the Javascript development cycle

And, VB.Net is SO different from VB that you may as well jump to C# if you want to stick with the M$ platform