information gatherer- Bot

I want to make a bot in either php or c that can use a website and do searchs and such using their databases. But I am not sure how to go about doing it. Lets say I wanted to submit a search using the websites database with certain search parameters. Normally you could do this stuff manually but it would take way too long to do so. I am trying to collect information. Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.

I prefer PHP and if you choose to, then use cURL (It is much faster than fsocks and sockets are more for persistant connections). If there is a timelimit for the script, adding: set_time_limit(0); usually removes it.

Thank you for the replys. I guess Ill start to code this thing.