Help for newbie

Hello everyone,
I've just signed up and am looking for some info to help me plan a system I
need to implement. In case anyones interested, I'm trying to build a data
warehouse, preferably on a Linux system, with mostly MS-Win3.11 clients.
What I'd like to know is....

Is there a FAQ anywhere ?
Is there a free 16bit odbc client out there?
 - I suppose I could do it in Java, but is there a Java which runs in
MS-Win3.11 ?
The other possibility is to write my own middleware - I've managed to avoid
programming MS-Windows machines in C so far, and intend to start now so it
won't look like odbc from *THAT* end. If I were to do this, then I'd
probably want to look at the protocol from the server's perspective - where
can I get more info on this?

Any help gratefully received.

Colin