Response time and throughput

Response time and throughput are related. The response time for an average transaction tends to decrease as you increase overall throughput.

However, you can decrease the response time for a specific query, at the expense of overall throughput, by allocating a disproportionate amount of resources to that query. Conversely, you can maintain overall throughput by restricting the resources that the database allocates to a large query.

The trade-off between throughput and response time becomes evident when you try to balance the ongoing need for high transaction throughput with an immediate need to perform a large decision-support query. The more resources that you apply to the query, the fewer you have available to process transactions, and the larger the impact your query can have on transaction throughput. Conversely, the fewer resources you allow the query, the longer the query takes.