Introduction of Throttling administrative feature in SharePoint 2010

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What is Throttling?
In simple words, we can say Throttling is the threshold limit of numbers of items that a database operation can involve at one time. It means, any list view items count or items return by SPQuery or SPSiteDataQuery should not cross Throttling limit as well as any query should not use more than the Throttling limit items at a time to prepare the query result. This property is available in SharePoint 2010 and only farm administration can modify Throttling limit and setting for a web application from the central administration web site.

Steps to update Throttling setting from the central administration web site:
1. Go to central administration > Click on Application  Management  >  Select your web application > Click on General Settings > Resource Throttling options.


2. Following popup will be visible to update the Throttling settings:


Note: Default value is 5000 items for normal users and 20000 items for administrators.

Why Throttling?
SharePoint 2010 included this administrative feature to avoid performance issue.

Is it recommended to increase Throttling limit?
As we know, SharePoint 2010 comes up with this feature to avoid performance issue and if we increase this limit with the much bigger number, this change will apply on all site collection of that web application. So it might degrade your site performance. But we might come across follwing obvious scenarios:
     Scenario 1: Few of the list view might have more items than the Throttling limit
     Scenario 2: Some queries might require more items at a time than Throttling limit to process data

When you come across these scenarios, it does not mean that we should increase Throttling limit on web application level. We have solution for above mentioned scenarios:
Solution of scenario 1 : Microsoft SharePoint 2010 provides functionality to enable/disable this administrative feature on list level but only farm administrator can enable/disable this feature from any list.

Power shell code to disable Throttling feature from a list:

$site  =  Get-SPWeb -Identity "<site url>" $list  =  $site.Lists["<List Title>"] $list.EnableThrottling =  $false

By writing console application farm administration can enable/disable this property.Sample code:

using (SPSite objSite = new SPSite("<Site Url>")) {   using (SPWeb objWeb = objSite.OpenWeb())   {   SPList objLargeList = objWeb.Lists["<List Title>"];   objLargeList.EnableThrottling = false;   objLargeList.Update();   } }

Solution of scenario 2:  In SharePoint 2010, there is property called "QueryThrottleMode" in the SPQuery or SPSiteDataQuery object. We can set one of the values of Microsoft.SharePoint.SPQueryThrottleOption enum. Possible values of this property are mentioned below:

Default: Apply default setting configured in central administration
Override: Throttling limit will not be applicable for local administrator
Strict: Apply Throttling strictly regardless of user permission

Thus, by setting Microsoft.SharePoint.SPQueryThrottleOption.Override to the "QueryThrottleMode" property we can overcome this scenario.