What happens if you exceed the provisioned throughput in DynamoDB?

In DynamoDB, if you exceed the provisioned throughput, requests are throttled. Provisioned throughput defines the maximum number of read and write operations that can be performed on the DynamoDB table within a second. When the number of requests exceeds these limits, DynamoDB limits incoming requests, which can lead to throttling.

Throttling means that the requests that exceed the provisioned capacity will not be processed immediately. Instead, they receive error responses, and clients may need to implement retries with exponential backoff to handle these throttled requests. This mechanism is critical for maintaining the performance and reliability of applications that interact with DynamoDB, as it protects the system from being overwhelmed by too many requests at once.

The other options do not accurately describe what occurs when provisioned throughput is exceeded. Requests being automatically scaled would imply that throughput increases dynamically without user intervention, which isn’t the case with provisioned capacity in DynamoDB. Data being queued is not a feature of DynamoDB; it doesn’t queue requests but rather throttles them. Lastly, all requests being canceled would negate the possibility of even processing valid requests that remain within capacity, which is not how DynamoDB operates. Throttling allows for some requests to proceed while others are limited based on throughput