What could be the cause of periodic failures in an integration that inserts orders for high-volume customers?

Periodic failures in an integration that inserts orders for high-volume customers can often be attributed to record locking contention on the parent Account. In Salesforce and similar systems, when multiple transactions try to access and modify the same record simultaneously, it can lead to locking issues. This contention occurs because the Order records are linked to the Account record, and when high volumes of orders are being processed, multiple integration events may attempt to update or create Order records that rely on the same parent Account.

When one transaction locks the Account record for updating, all other attempts to access the same Account record for creating or updating related Order records experience contention. This can result in failures or timeouts, leading to the observed periodic failures in the integration process.

Understanding how this contention affects the transactional integrity and system performance is crucial. Integrations need to be designed to mitigate the chances of record locking by batching requests, managing transaction sizes, or implementing retries with gradual back-off strategies, which can help alleviate such issues in high-volume scenarios.