Actually for AOLserver instances, I now use init scripts which use daemontools commands. Why? Daemontools doesn't shut down during server shutdown or restart, and doesn't start up in an order that you can adjust. This could be important for AOLserver connecting to Oracle, because Oracle will not shut down if AOLserver is still connected. Actually Qmail, djbdns and other software also doesn't shut down nicely, so I just creates an init script that runs a bulk svc -d /service/* as the first script to run. You would need individual scripts only if you want a more specific order for these services.
Talli, good point about the reference platform. I had decided not to send my previous post, as it wasn't really helpful. Somehow it got sent anyway.