Oracle, Web Servers, and Firewalls

All right, it's been decreed that we need to be able to integrate our web server (Linux + Apache + PHP3) with our Oracle database (7.something, me thinks, running on SCO OpenServer V). Two questions:

1-Our web server and Oracle system are on either side of our firewall - a TIS Firewall Toolkit proxy based setup. Since FWTK has no SQL proxy, it look like we may have to move to a commercial firewall. I'm looking for recommendations on this. Hopefully, something that doesn't cost giant heaps of money. I've been looking at TIS Guantlet, but their BSD version doesn't work with Oracle, so I'd be looking at buying a Sun workstation to run the Solaris version. $$$.  I've also heard Raptor is a viable solution, but I haven't got too far with this one yet.

2-Developing Linux programs to that can access the Oracle DB. I'm assuming we need Oracle libraries to write programs to access an Oracle DB. Do such libraries exist that get along with linux?

Sorry if these are dumb questions, but like I said, I'm not a Oracle guy (nor am I a web developer, really).

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.