SharePoint Lists vs Database Tables performance

Question

1. We are looking to store transactional data in SharePoint lists. The lists will easily grow to 100,000+ items.
2. How would the query performance be compared with que

Answer 1

+1 No

SharePoint primarily function is collaboration. In your case you will just list the data as read-only. In your situation I would recommend to store the data into SQL DB, if you need to display it in SharePoint portal you can use BDC or something like Bamboo Data View web part. http://store.bamboosolutions.com/p-71-data-viewer-web-part.aspx

Answer 2

Having done this myself, I would say try to avoid it if possible! It's a minefield, especially after about 100,000 rows.

Something that can end up biting you as well, is that the search crawler can start timing out trying to crawl really large lists - you can increase the time outs, but it's the beginning of a loosing battle.

Answer 3

The SharePoint lists will be slower.

More overhead = worse performance.

Answer 4

Of course, the proposed approach is not recommended.

But, being in the subject, here is a good doc for large lists perf in WSS

Answer 5

I concur with all of the above comments. I've had extensive experience with customers who wanted to use SharePoint lists for things where they didn't fit. If you're worried about performance at all, then SharePoint lists are not the way to go. If it's simply for archival purposes and you are doing infrequent searches against the data and the SharePoint search features are sufficient for you, I might consider it and not dismiss it out of hand (if you're using MOSS).

But I would consider all aspects of this carefully. It's not too difficult through Data Form Web Parts, and the BDC to get SQL server data into the SharePoint environment, but it is more difficult to get SharePoint data into other platforms or applications.

And again, if performance is at all a requirement, then don't do it.

For more SharePoint scalability and performance best practice information see: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc287790.aspx

Answer 6

The rule of thumb is to limit SharePoint lists to 2000 items for performance reasons.

At 100k, the performance would go "from suck to blow".

The only way that this could work is if you could segment the data set into multiple lists with less than 2000 in each.