A document handle is a unique identifier for a document. The Document Handle Block Size option controls the number of document handles reserved for imported documents. This can be used with a process that is importing a large quantity of new documents to increase the performance of the import process. By default, when a process creates a new document, new document handles are retrieved from the database one at a time. When the Document Handle Block Size option is set to a higher number, the database query retrieves several document handles at one time. These document handles are cached in memory in the software, which reduces the number of queries against the database when performing import processing.
The database query always retrieves the number of document handles specified by the Document Handle Block Size option. Set this option to the average size of the batches you are processing. The range of values available is 1 – 1000. If the process only needs one document handle but the option is set to 100, 99 document handles are left unused and cannot be reused.