07 January 2008

Firewall Builder

- Firewall Builder, also known as Fwbuilder, is a vendor-neutral configuration and management application for firewalls. The application was created for the Linux operating system; versions are available for other operating systems, including Windows and Macintosh. According to Fwbuilder's user guide, both network administrators and hobbyists managing home-based local area networks (LANs) can simplify management tasks with the application. Fwbuilder supports the OpenBSD Packet Filter, Cisco PIX Series security devices, and iptables and ipfilter Linux utilities.

Fwbuilder allows for the simultaneous management of multiple firewalls on multiple servers. Programming components called policy compilers facilitate fine-tuning of firewall policy rules without the need for the administrator to remember all of the details for each firewall or server. The policy compilers also ensure that firewalls are "sane" -- that is, that there are no contradictions or errors that would interfere with the intended and legitimate use of the network by its subscribers.

Fwbuilder is available under a dual licensing model, either as a conventional commercial license or a package distributed under the GNU Public License (GPL).

Source: http://searchsecurity.techtarget.com

What is MySQL

MySQL

- MySQL is a relational database management system (RDBMS) based on SQL
(Structured Query Language). First released in January, 1998, MySQL is now one component of parent company MySQL AB's product line of database servers and development tools.

Many Internet startups became interested in the original open source version of MySQL as an alternative to the proprietary database systems from Oracle, IBM, and Informix. MySQL is currently available under two different licensing agreements: free of charge, under the GNU General Public License (GPL) open source system or through subscription to MySQL Network for business applications.

MySQL runs on virtually all platforms, including Linux, Unix, and Windows. It is fully multi-threaded using kernel threads, and provides application program interfaces (APIs) for many programming languages, including C, C++, Eiffel, Java, Perl, PHP, Python, and Tcl.

MySQL is used in a wide range of applications, including data warehousing, e-commerce, Web databases, logging applications and distributed applications. It is also increasingly embedded in third-party software and other technologies. According to MySQL AB, their flagship product has over six million active MySQL installations worldwide. Customers include Cisco, Dun & Bradstreet, Google, NASA, Lufthansa, Hyperion, and Suzuki.