Why does RPM access the database even when nothing is happening? No password change jobs are scheduled to run yet the tools deferred processing service appears to access the database regularly.

Answer

The service account connects to the database periodically to check for new work such as dynamic group updates as well as password changes and other jobs which might be scheduled.

Using dynamic group updates as an example, the service account will connect to the database following every sleep period (the count down timer on the deferred processing page) to check the update schedule for the dynamic group and to see if it needs to be done again. Then if the group needs to be updated, it checks the criteria, then rescans for those systems based on the criteria then add or removes what it finds. During that process it will also log to the database its actions.