Internal vs. External Drivers

Prior to Version 2.1, AOLserver provided a tightly-coupled solution to database driver integration, with database client libraries linked directly into the server. Such database drivers are called internal drivers.

Since Version 2.1, AOLserver provides an additional, loosely-coupled architecture, where AOLserver redirects all database requests to a separate process known as the database proxy daemon. This is accomplished using a special external driver, which looks just like an internal database driver to AOLserver.