First of all, you can upload JQuery yourself and use it, I've never heard of a hosting service restricting this. Having said that, AJAX is simply a technique you can employ in your code.
The 2 major components of this design is the interface and constructing the query. Depending on your criteria, you can use a combination of radio buttons, check boxes, etc.
The same concept applies in Java as PHP, after the user submits. Construct the query based on what parameters & conditions the user selects. This is something we can only help you with when you post code.