Ownermanager

Ownermanager is a design concept used in software architecture to describe a pairing of an owning component and a separate manager component responsible for the lifecycle and coordination of a resource. The owner controls access and state, while the manager coordinates creation, configuration, and disposal.

In this pattern, the owner typically holds the primary reference to a resource and enforces access policies, while the manager encapsulates operations that affect the resource's lifecycle, such as initialization, persistence, synchronization, and cleanup.

Common contexts include modular applications where components own data models and a separate manager handles persistence or remote synchronization, or UI frameworks where a view or view-model is the owner of a data model and a dedicated manager coordinates updates.

Benefits include clearer ownership boundaries, centralized lifecycle management, and easier testing of lifecycle logic. Drawbacks include added indirection, potential for reference leaks if cleanup is incomplete, and ambiguity if roles are not well defined.

Relation to related concepts: it overlaps with repository, factory, or service patterns. It echoes separation of concerns and can be implemented with various dependency-injection or composition approaches.

Example: in a system managing a database connection, an owner holds the connection; a manager handles connect, reconnect, and dispose, exposing safe operations to clients.