US Patent 11609960 Methods and apparatus for automatically servicing item data requests

This application relates to apparatus and methods for automatically servicing item data requests in data management systems, such as in retail management systems. The apparatus and methods employ a throttling technique to service data requests from one or more entities. In some examples, a computing device initializes assigns a counter for each entity, and initializes each counter with an initial value. The computing device also occasionally (e.g., periodically) resets each counter to the initial value. The computing device may receive a data request from one of the entities, and determines whether the counter corresponding to the entity identifies a count that is beyond a threshold. If the counter identifies a count beyond the threshold, the computing device adjusts the counter, and processes the data request. If the counter does not identify a count beyond the threshold, the computing device responds to the entity with an error.