You might find it helpful to read a couple of books:

"Learning Java"

  http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/learnjava2/

"Database Programming with JDBC & Java"

  http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/jdbc2/index.html

The first book contains plenty of examples of Java techniques, such as
opening a file and reading it a line at a time.

The second book focusses on database programming with Java.

You should then read the documentation about Connector/J, the JDBC
library for MySQL:

  http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/4.1/en/connector-j.html

This provides advice about how to obtain and install the latest version
of Connector/J, and examples showing how to connect to MySQL and send
commands and queries to the MySQL server.

Good luck with your project.

David Harper
Cambridge, England