AUTOSCALING EXTERNAL FUNCTION REQUESTS

External functions can provide users of a database system the ability to invoke external services while operating from inside the database system. The techniques described herein address may detect throttling by the external system and automatically adjust or modify a request rate accordingly. Also, the techniques described herein may increase the request rate to optimize the use of the resources provided by the external system. These techniques allow the database system to improve efficiency when working with external services, which may or may not be elastic or scalable. Moreover, these techniques can decrease query execution times and reduce costs.