For organizations who work with a large number of records, you may have noticed performance issues while using SharePoint. This is typically encountered when the SharePoint list view exceeds 5000 items.

However, the issue is not a limitation of SharePoint, but instead relates to how SQL fetches data. SharePoint queries the SQL table to fetch records to create dynamic lists and columns and, in return, SQL passes appropriate data to respond to the query. During this processing, the query SQL server locks the entire table which causes a performance hit when the query on a single table exceeds 5000 records. This means the user accessing the content in SharePoint will have to wait until the SQL server executes the query.

For this reason, the default limit of SharePoint is set to 5000 records in order to maintain good performance. SharePoint 2010 is set to have certain thresholds, boundaries, and supported limits:

• A boundary is an absolute limit that cannot be exceeded by design.
• A threshold has a default value that cannot be exceeded unless the value is modified.
• A supported limit defines a tested value for a given parameter. This is how the default value is derived.

SharePoint components to which boundaries and thresholds apply -

• Content Databases
• Lists & Libraries
• Columns
• Pages
• Web Applications
• Site Collections

In SharePoint 2010, the supported limit of the threshold for list view is 5000 records by default; in order to maintain decent performance. However, since it is not a boundary, it can be changed at the risk of taking a hit to performance. The list view threshold limit can be extended to 50000 records.

AllianceTek recently faced this issue with SharePoint speed and tried several things to improve SharePoint performance.

• As a 1^st step, we exceeded the threshold limit, which did not help much.
• Deleted old data that is no longer useful.
• Indexed the list columns in the list.
• Progressively applied indexing to multiple columns, which made a remarkable difference.

These steps improved SharePoint performance by 30%. We are also looking into extending hardware support and upgrading to SQL 2012 to check if the limits are redefined or to look for other performance enhancement possibilities.

Are you a SharePoint professional who has encountered SharePoint speed issues? Did you find a solution? Please share your experiences below in the comments. If you have not found a solution, try implementing the steps we did and let us know if you noticed an improvement.

Call us at 484-892-5713 or Contact Us today to learn more about resolve issues that cause poor SharePoint performance.