Display Oracle background processes in Windows

Oracle Database Tips by Donald BurlesonMay 12, 2015

Question: I knows how to use the "ps -ef" command in UNIX to see my Oracle background processes but I don't know how to see the background processes in Windows. When I view Oracle processes on Windows, all I see is one background process called oracle.exe. How do you see details on the Oracle background processes on Windows?

Answer: In Windows, the "thread" model is used, and Oracle dispatches his own background tasks within the domain of the single process, oracle.exe.

Hence, you cannot see any background processes from the Windows OS (but you can see listener process and parallel query slaves). To see detauls about the background processes in Windows, you need to run a dictionary query against the v$bgprocess view to see what the background processes are doing in Windows:

set lines 200

select
   a.sid,
   a.serial#,
   a.program,
   p.pid,
   p.spid,
   a.osuser,
   b.name,
   b.description.
   p.pga_used_mem
from
   v$session   a,
   v$process   p,
   v$bgprocess b
where
   a.paddr=b.paddr
and
   a.paddr=p.addr
and
   p.background=1
;

Please note that this inability to see the Oracle background processes in Windows is actually a benefit because Oracle leverages on the thread model in Windows, In UNIX, the OS dispatches and manages the background tasks, but within Oracle on Windows, Oracle is able to manage the background task activity directly.

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