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Over-fetching and under-fetching

Over-fetching happens when clients request more data than they render. Under-fetching happens when clients do not request data they need, leading to extra round trips.

Symptoms

  • Large responses with many unused fields
  • Repeated follow-up queries to fill in missing data
  • Fragile mega queries that change frequently

Why it matters

These issues reduce performance and increase maintenance costs as systems grow.

Practices that address this

Patterns that address this