We have an application which uses the SharePoint web service interface to communicate with a SharePoint environment which programmatically uploads documents and then stores the document in a folder in SharePoint where the folder name is a reference number. Each folder typically has 10-20 documents (and growing) but we have 80,000+ folders. This makes it very easy to build a URL to show all the documents for a particular reference number. As part of the upload process we check if a folder for the reference number exists using the SPLists web service and a CAML query of the form:
<Query><Where><Eq><FieldRef Name=”Title”/><Value Type=Text>A000000</Value></Eq></Where></Query>
In the case A00000 is the folder name we want to check to see if it exists . If it does not then we create the folder.
This all works fine in SharePoint 2007, but in SharePoint 2010 we get the error “The attempted operation is prohibited because it exceeds the threshold set by the administrator”. i.e. even though I only expect one folder to be returned I am exceeding the 5000 item list in SP2010
I have googled this problem and the answer seems to be “Get the Administrator to increase/remove the limit”. However this is not ideal unless we can remove the limit at the list level.
My questions therefor are:
Can this limit be removed at the list level or is it only applicable at the farm and/or site level?
Is there any way to improve the CAML statement so it does not hit this limit?
Many thanks
Nigel T