[R] Seeking pointers to help

[Donna-n-Doug Finner]

Noob alert....
I've been through most of the available documentation at a fairly high
level - if I've missed the obvious, just point me in the right
direction.

What I'd like to build:
Windows XP system (actually, I'd prever a *nix but must use Win).
Backend data stored in MySQL db
Front end user interface built using PHP/HTML running on Apache.

User builds a select via the web front end.
User selects a canned analysis or graph for the data set.
System grabs the data, passes the data to R, magic happens, graphs displayed.
User isn't exposed to the R-GUI.

Is this kind of design possible?
Without going into detail, how would this kind of system be
structured?  What keywords can I look up that fill in the blanks?  Are
there any samples of this type of system I can see and/or use?
Is there another way I should be thinking about this kind of design?

Additional wrinkle - we may need to substitute Excel as the raw data
source.  I've been playing with converting XL files to tab sep var
files and had some level of luck.  I haven't given the ODBC method a
try yet since that was a 'not' recommended method.

I'm sure I'll have more to follow.  This tool looks pretty neat. 
Thanks in advance for any tips or pointers.

Doug