CGI applications on Apache/Linux AS

My team is the initial stages of re-hosting a series of CGI
applications to a Linux/Apache platform. We will need to support
persistent database connections (which was provided by the Web
Server/OS on our old HP platform) on the new version. We are currently
evaluating FastCGI as a way to support this without having to re-write
our applications in PHP, Java etc. We are primarily connecting to
Oracle using OCCI.

Does anyone out there know of any Apache modules or related software
out there that assists with database connection persistence etc. on
Apache? If so, I would appreciate hearing about it. Thanx.

P.S. Just in case it is relevant.. We are using Apache 1.3.23 and
RedHat Linux AS 2.1 .