SharePoint Online Data Access Performance test - CSOM and PowerShell / C#

Two years ago, I did a similar test on SharePoint 2016. That's through server-side API.

Now, it's time to test SharePoint Online through client side CSOM + PowerShell.

SharePoint Online as access threshold for one user, which make it hard to test "multiple thread" performance.

However, we still can test "ExecuteQuery for each item" and "ExecuteQuery for a batch of items".

I assume the SharePoint Online host center is quite close to where I am, as the network latency is less than 3 ms for tenant 1, and less than 15 ms for tenant 2.

* The test is based on two different tenants and 100 list items.
* The unit in the table below is "items per second".
* There is no "Bulk commit" for Delete, Recycle and Retrieve.
* 5 single-line text fields in the test list.

Action	Single, tenant 1	Single, tenant 2	Bulk, tenant 1	Bulk, tenant 2
Insert	7.1	6.6	14.1	12.7
Update	8.6	7.1	21.3	13.5
Delete	5.8	6.3	10.4	10.4
Retrieve	11.9	13.3	1000	1000

For single item "insert", it takes around 140 ms.

The performance is around 25% of SharePoint 2016 (local server). This is disappointing, even if we exclude the 15 ms consumed on the traffic.

So, it's fast for "read-only" access on SharePoint Online, but pretty slow for any "write" access.

[update, 2018-12-07]

PowerShell script is slower than C#, so I did some other test by C#

Run the C# code remotely

Action	Single, test 1	Single, test 2	Bulk, test 1	Bulk, test 2
Insert	6.90	6.09	7.79	12.91
Update	7.94	6.42	19.49	17.25
Delete	6.01	6.00	5.78	6.34
Recycle	6.46	6.59	6.37	7.10
Retrieve	1307.85	1183.34	807.41	746.23

Run the C# code from Azure API Apps

Action	Single, test 1	Single, test 2	Bulk, test 1	Bulk, test 2
Insert	8.17	7.14	7.14	12.35
Update	10.63	8.16	8.16	14.93
Delete	7.69	6.41	6.41	7.12
Recycle	9.08	6.76	6.76	6.68
Retrieve	2133.05	1600.18	1600.18	1280.42

Not much difference.