Patent ID: 8429120

Claim:
A system for implementing a payment service, the system comprising: a payment service interface configured to receive from one or more clients, requests to perform one or more work items associated with processing payments; a database system comprising multiple database partitions configured to store information associated with one or more of the work items associated with processing payments; multiple host computers configured to perform work items requested through the payment service interface, wherein performing at least some of said work items includes initiating one or more commit operations on one or more of said database partitions, at least some of the commit operations associated with updating a state of a transaction processed by the payment service; wherein each given host computer is configured to: for each database partition, store a respective value of commit latency that is based on latencies of previous commit operations directed to that database partition; in response to determining that one or more values of commit latency for one or more of the database partitions exceed a particular commit latency threshold: determine that a given work item is to be postponed to reduce load on the database system; and perform the given work item after the postponement.