Will 5 million list items bring WSS3.0 to a standstill?
My client is assessing WSS 3.0 as a workflow platform.
They will have between 1.5 and 10 million list items within one Site / content database.
The actual list items will each be approx 20 columns of data, only one multi-line text field.
Some list items will be linked to documents in a library.
(Views of the list will have to be limited to avoid rendering issues eg. to 100 items)The application will also use workflows processes.
Could a well-spec'ed single server with SQL server be able to cope?
Any suggestions?
Thanks
Ruth, UK
Answers
- SQL will cope with that volume, so oddly will MOSS - but it will be impossible to render. A system I know of accidentally created a list with a silly amount of items in the millions - was a pain to clean up and the change log was a nightmare.
However, this sounds like the wrong solution, you can use workflow without needing WSS, SQL for storage and you don't suggest any significant use of the product than to hold a large list, which is held in SQL anyway. If your designing a custom front end, you might as well attch directly to SQl and bypass WSS unless there are significant benefits to draw from using it.
Regards
John Timney- Marked As Answer byRuth J Thursday, November 19, 2009 12:51 PM
All Replies
- Perhaps you need to closely read this while paper first (if not already done so) titled "Working with Large Lists" http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=95450&clcid=0x409. Things like using subfolders , proper views to limit viewing etc are all contibuting factors in getting resaonable performance.Usually the term performance is quite relative term , parameter set by some one else on similar scneario may or may not meet your's and vice versa. For getting better idea of what options might suits you best read "Plan for Perfromance & Capacity" at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288124.aspx. Also you may want to have SQL Server in cluster mode.
http://razi.spaces.live.com/- Marked As Answer byLambert QinMSFT, ModeratorTuesday, November 10, 2009 3:59 AM
- Proposed As Answer byMichael Nemtsev [MVP]MVPWednesday, November 04, 2009 11:54 AM
- Unmarked As Answer byRuth J Thursday, November 19, 2009 12:51 PM
Hi Razi, thanks for your post.
It was good to see the whitepaper for working with large Lists. Such a thorough benchmark test for lists is well worth highlighting.
However, the main reason for my post was that 100,000 items in a list is considerably smaller than the 1.5 Million-10 million items my client is considering.The proposed application will need to run on a single server and WSS could help speed up the delivery of the solution, but they still need convincing. A Java platform is their other option (as they have Java skills).
They will definately be designing their own front end, and were thinking of using SharePoint for storage, Workflow, and using the API to retreive list items. The WSS server will not be used for anything else.
So, WSS SharePoint as a platform. avoiding the rendering problems by building own front end. Having the list with attached workflows. I think it would be stretching SharePoint's scalability, but I'd like to be proved wrong.
Ruth, UK- SQL will cope with that volume, so oddly will MOSS - but it will be impossible to render. A system I know of accidentally created a list with a silly amount of items in the millions - was a pain to clean up and the change log was a nightmare.
However, this sounds like the wrong solution, you can use workflow without needing WSS, SQL for storage and you don't suggest any significant use of the product than to hold a large list, which is held in SQL anyway. If your designing a custom front end, you might as well attch directly to SQl and bypass WSS unless there are significant benefits to draw from using it.
Regards
John Timney- Marked As Answer byRuth J Thursday, November 19, 2009 12:51 PM
