Flow control in a distributed environment

An apparatus comprising:

• a bus;
• a storage device connected to the bus, wherein program code is stored on the storage device;
• a processor unit connected to the bus, wherein the processor unit executes the program code to determine whether a connection within a pool of connections has an outstanding request from the client in response to receiving a request from a client;
• determine whether a set of requests queued for the connection is equal to or exceeds a threshold in response to a determination that the connection has the outstanding request;
• and fail to process subsequent requests from the client until the set of requests becomes less than the threshold in response to a determination that the set of requests is equal to or exceeds the threshold.

A computer program product comprising:

• a computer usable medium having computer usable program code, responsive to receiving a request horn a client for determining whether a connection within a pool of connections has an outstanding request from the client;
• computer usable program code, responsive to a determination that the connection has the outstanding request, for determining whether a set of requests queued for the connection is equal to or exceeds a threshold;
• and
• computer usable program code, responsive to a determination that the set of requests is equal to or exceeds the threshold, for failing to process subsequent requests from the client until the set of requests becomes less than the threshold.