Queries per second (QPS) is a measure of the amount of search traffic an
information-retrieval system, such as a
search engine
A search engine is a software system that provides hyperlinks to web pages, and other relevant information on World Wide Web, the Web in response to a user's web query, query. The user enters a query in a web browser or a mobile app, and the sea ...
or a
database
In computing, a database is an organized collection of data or a type of data store based on the use of a database management system (DBMS), the software that interacts with end users, applications, and the database itself to capture and a ...
, receives in one second.
Microsoft's search glossary
/ref> The term is used more broadly for any request–response
In computer science, request–response or request–reply is one of the basic methods computers use to communicate with each other in a network, in which the first computer sends a ''request'' for some data and the second ''responds'' to the req ...
system, where it can more correctly be called requests per second (RPS).
High-traffic systems must be mindful of QPS to know when to scale to handle greater load.
See also
* Transactions per second
References
Units of frequency
Information retrieval evaluation
{{comp-sci-stub