The process manager process (PMAN) oversees several background processes including shared servers, pooled servers, and job queue processes. PMAN monitors, spawns, and stops the following types of processes as needed:
- Dispatcher and shared server processes
- Connection broker and pooled server processes for database resident connection pools
- Job queue processes
- Restartable background processes
PMAN runs as an operating system process and not as a thread. In addition to database instances, PMAN also runs on Oracle Automatic Storage Management (Oracle ASM) instances and Oracle ASM proxy instances.