Avoiding Request Waterfalls
A request waterfall occurs when independent requests are unnecessarily executed one after another.
Suppose a dashboard needs users, revenue, and notifications. If those requests do not depend on one another, executing them sequentially increases total latency.
Use Promise.all or equivalent parallelization when independent data sources can be requested simultaneously.
Parallel Requests
const [users, revenue, notifications] = await Promise.all([
getUsers(),
getRevenue(),
getNotifications()
]);💡 All independent operations begin without waiting for the previous operation to finish.
Key Takeaways
- Identify independent requests and execute them concurrently.
- Waterfalls often become visible as latency grows.
- Do not parallelize operations that genuinely depend on one another.