A secure design is only part of the solution. During development, when the code is being written, it is important to consider illegitimate uses of your application. Often, the focus is on making the application work as intended, and while this is necessary to deliver a properly functioning application, it does nothing to help make the application secure.

Open source has brought a lot more than Linux to the computing world. It has also given us PHP and MySQL. According to Graeme, PHP and MySQL are the world's best combination for creating data-driven sites. In the first installment of this three-lesson tutorial, our Kiwi guide covers everything you need to know to begin developing database hubs. He gives instructions for installation on both Unix and Windows, and then goes on to show some simple scripts that will insert information into a database and display that data on a Web page.

"When you are inserting data into a MySQL database, certain characters have a special meaning and must therefore be escaped if you wish to insert these characters literally."

"If your database is installed on the same machine as the web server and PHP, you can compile your own PHP and link with Oracle’s libraries used by the database. On Windowsyou can use PHP’s pre-supplied binaries."