In software, a throttling process, or a throttling controller as it is sometimes called, is a process responsible for regulating the rate at which application processing is conducted, either statically or dynamically.
For example, in high throughput processing scenarios, as may be common in online transactional processing (OLTP) architectures, a throttling controller may be embedded in the application hosting platform to balance the application's outbound publishing rates with its inbound consumption rates, optimize available system resources for the processing profile, and prevent eventually unsustainable consumption. In something like an enterprise application integration (EAI) architecture, a throttling process may be built into the application logic to prevent an expectedly slow end-system from becoming overloaded as a result of overly aggressive publishing from the middleware tier.