MediaWiki and Databases

So I'm working for a Material Science research group for a summer job, and they want me to set up a wiki to centralize data and experiment results. I've taken exactly one Java class.

So, I set up a MediaWiki site, but they want to connect the data together, along with citations.

For example, Silicon has two properties they're interested in, "hole mobility" and "electron mobility". So on the wiki article on Silicon, they want to list Silicon's hole mobility and the electron mobility, but on the page for electron mobility, we want a list of many different elements' hole mobilities. When they update the hole mobility on the Silicon page, they want the number on the Hole mobility page to update as well. They will also want a citation attached to each data bit, so they'll know what circumstances and where that information came from

I believe that this will require a database system, and was wondering if you guys could point me in the right direction. I've just started to learn MySQL, and well frankly and slightly overwhelmed. Is MySQL too powerful of a language for this? Is there a simpler way to implement website-wide changes?

Thanks yall.

Oh wow... okay so I didn't know there were other options other than MediaWiki. I'm reading through www.wikimatrix.org right now, which looks like a good resource.

As for the database, I'm pretty sure I'm trying to do something extremely simple (have a "core" that other pages reference for data when loading), so is SQL or MySQL simpler to learn? Or perhaps another language?

Thanks!

I didn't think there would be any computer coding, certainly wasn't in the job description. I think they just need to keep me busy while they try to find something more productive for me to work on.