Server Language

I am going to be hiring a programmer to create a avatar based chatroom. I would like the client side to be used with any browser without the need to download programs to run the chat, example flash, java. I find using mysql database for chat messages is slow and was wondering is it possible to create a server program to be used to run the chat messages to output in html/ajax? If so what language?

thanks.

For starters, I would take a look at nodejs and [URL=“http://socket.io/”]socket.io. Nodejs was built to make fast applications and socket.io makes realtime apps possible across different browsers and devices. And the language for both is javascript.

would a java server work and client side using javascript?

Yes, but in my opinion, using java will require way more work, than javascript server side solution.