Working with large lists in WSS and MOSS

Background

This document written by Microsoft does provide some useful statistics (yawn!) but important overall statements that will affect the way you architect your lists used with BOTH your MOSS and WSS v3 based deployments. Remember virtually everything is a based upon some form of list within Microsoft’s latest platform so pay attention!

Although described as being a series of tests using MOSS, this also applies to WSS based lists as they are principally one in the same. I am surprised they have used a rather low end platform for these tests, but to be ‘forewarned is forearmed’ so to speak.

Some important statements around list size, including the use of folders are particularly key.

Whom should read this? Well any Architect or Consultant whose role it is to design solutions based upon this platform needs to be aware. Of particular interest also was the finding for the ‘crawl times’ that can be affected by the use of large lists (I painfully recall SharePoint 2003/WSS V2 having similar issues!!). This is also of particular interest to those of you who use SharePoint to store your scanned images as part of your document imaging solution.

Work with large lists in WSS and MOSS will be something that needs to be worked into your designs and solutions.