Enzo's Edge Cache can provide a 10x performance improvement for accessing SharePoint Online lists, improving application performance, reporting speed, and overall throughput. Accessing large SharePoint lists requires a relatively large amount of metadata to be transmitted, in addition to requiring multiple roundtrips to SharePoint Online due to the 5,000 item limit imposed by SharePoint Online.

SharePoint Online: The Problem

Generally speaking the larger the list, the longer the amount of time it will take to fetch data from SharePoint. Factors that can slow down these queries include: the SharePoint Online service itself slowing down due to high traffic, the rate limiting behavior of SharePoint Online if too many requests are sent from the same account, roundtrips required due to the 5,000 item limit imposed by SharePoint Online, and network speed.



Another related issue is that administrators and power users must use an ODBC driver to access SharePoint Online lists, which is also bound by the same limitations described in this article. As a result, ODBC drivers cannot solve the performance related issues that are imposed by SharePoint Online.

Introducing An Edge Cache

Introducing an Edge Cache for SharePoint Online lists, small and large, can boost performance by a factor of 10 in most cases. That's due to the fact that the Edge Cache has already retrieved the data for you, and is made available close to where it is needed which reduces network latency and eliminates all the other factors mentioned previously. In addition, Enzo's Edge Cache is automatically refreshed based on a schedule you define (for example you can refresh a cached SharePoint list every 5 minutes).

Enzo's Edge Cache is available for both SQL and HTTP requests; this means that the same cache can be used by reports, and applications (such as web portals and mobile devices). In addition Enzo hides the complexities of the SharePoint API and exposes a simpler HTTP API to access SharePoint lists, which simplifies development significantly. Enzo provides a native SQL endpoint so that power users can query the edge cache without ODBC drivers.

With an Edge Cache you can achieve the following easily and quickly:

• Faster throughput (usually 10x or more)
• More responsive applications
• Faster reporting
• Reduced SharePoint Online workload