Database Connection persistence on Apache

Our team is in the process of re-hosting a set of C++ CGI applications
to a Linux/Apache platform. Our old machine (HP NonStop) provided
Database connection persistence via the OS and Web Server. We need to
support this on the Apache versions as well, without having to
re-write our apps in Java, PHP, Perl etc.. As a result I am currently
evaluating FastCGI to see if that would provide some answers.

We are still pretty green working with Apache so forgive if this a
naive question etc. Are there other Apache modules/facilities or
related software that we could look at to provide us this capability?
We will be primarily connecting to Oracle using OCCI and Sql Server
via ODBC.

Thanx..

P.S. In case this is relevant, we are running Apache 1.3.23 on Linux
AS 2.1 .