What happens if the provisioned throughput is exceeded?

When the provisioned throughput of a service such as Amazon DynamoDB is exceeded, an error message is indeed returned with an exception. This occurs because the system cannot handle more requests than the defined limits of read and write units. When a client hits the limits of the provisioned capacity, the request cannot be processed, and the service will respond with an error indicating that the request cannot be fulfilled due to exceeding allocated throughput.

This behavior is critical for managing resources effectively and for ensuring fair usage among clients accessing the same database. When the system indicates that throughput has been exceeded, it allows developers to implement strategies such as exponential backoff, which can help manage request retries in a controlled manner. Understanding this response is crucial for designing applications that use services with provisioned throughput, as it helps developers anticipate and handle situations where capacity constraints may affect performance.