Manually updating dpkg database

[Errol Neal <eneal@bnbtv.com>]

Hello,

I have been a debian user for a number of years now. I believe that debian 
is probably the most robust linux distribution available today. I am new to 
the user list, so please forgive me if my question has been brought up and 
answered before.

Okay, I am faced with a situation that I am sure many of other debian users 
have been faced with before. Quite often, I instlal software from source 
tarballs. This of course does not update the debian package database, so 
say for instance, like today, i installed openssl-0.9.6i, well the dpkg 
database shows the version 0.9.6c, and of course there is a debian update 
for the recent bug discovered in openssl version below 0.9.6i and 0.9.7a. 
Well, an apt-get would of course overwrite my newly installed openssl 
package, so I need to know how do I manually update the database when I 
install a new package? Is this the place to ask this question? I would 
appreciate any help. Also, I have looked into building debian packages, but 
that is a little more than I want to do right now.

TIA,

Errol Neal