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Defining Latency Requirements

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To decide how your data model should be structured and how efficient it needs to be, we need to understand the system’s latency requirements.

Types of latency requirements

  1. Real-time: Sub-second response required
  2. Near real-time: Response within seconds to minutes
  3. Batch: Scheduled processing, often hourly or daily

Example latency requirements & their impact

RequirementTargetImpact on Data Model
Order status query< 100msDenormalized table, heavy indexing
Sales dashboard refresh< 5 minutesPre-aggregated tables, incremental updates
Order confirmationReal-time (< 1s)Write-through cache, denormalized structure
Inventory updateNear real-time (< 1 min)Message queue, eventual consistency
Daily sales reportBatch (< 4 hours)ETL process, OLAP cube

Questions to ask about latency

  • "What are the SLAs for the main user-facing features?"
  • "Are there any background processes with specific timing requirements?"
  • "How do latency requirements differ for different types of data or queries?"
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