A client-server database system enables persistent client-server database sessions, without modification to a client-side application, a database system, or native client-side database drivers. The client is implemented with a driver manager to facilitate communication between the native database drivers and the database application. The driver manager wraps the native drivers, intercepting queries passed from the database application to the database drivers. The driver manager modifies the queries to form modified queries that direct the database server to render result sets produced from processing the queries persistent at the database server. Upon recovery following a server crash, the driver manager directs the drivers to reestablish a connection with the database server. The driver manager then finds the persistent result set table and, using logged data, returns to the same operation on the result set table just prior to the crash. The driver manager then reassociates the application context to the new database session without the database application being aware that a failure occurred. The recovery is thus transparent to the client-side application.