title: DynamoDB: when does ProvisionedThroughputExceededException raise
body: <p>I'm using AWS Java SDK in Apache Spark job to populate DynamoDB table with data extracted from S3. Spark job just writes data using single <code>PutItem</code>s with very intense flow (three m3.xlarge nodes used only to write) and without any retry policy. </p>
  
  <p>DynamoDB docs <a href="http://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerguide/Programming.Errors.html#Programming.Errors.RetryAndBackoff" rel="nofollow noreferrer">state</a> that AWS SDK has backoff policy, but eventually if rate is too high <code>ProvisionedThroughputExceededException</code> can be raised. My spark job worked for three days and was constrained only by DynamoDB thoughput (equal 500 units) so I expect rate was extremely high and queue was extremely long, however I didn't have any signs of thrown exceptions or lost data.</p>
  
  <p>So, my question is - when it is possible to get an exception when writing to DynamoDB with very high rate.</p>