How to add a site column to a site content type in a large environment?

Question

How do I add an extra (site) column to a content type on a large environment (~500gb, loads of documents).

I've have tried using the UI but that failed halfway the operation due to a time-out. Now some list-contentypes have this extra field and some don't. (luckily it was a test environment).

Will a feature with activation logic do the trick or will that also timeout?

What other options do I have?

Background

An extra field, Classification (Choice, Required) needs to be added to each and every document. In that field the company wide classification has to be stored, which in turn is used by an Archiving application. Since it is needed on every document in every list, the field must be added to the Document ContentType (0x0101). All content is in one sitecollection (I know....), using moss.

Answer 1

The best approach would be add it via a Feature CAML (using Visual Studio). The Feature, which contains the ContentTypes and related fields. Add an extra field in the ContentTypes and deactivate/active the Feature to get the extra field.

The least recommend approach is to write a command-line application which update a sepcific content type with an extra field. But, remember don't forget to push changes to the inheriting ContentTypes to see the complete change.

Answer 2

Are there other issues in the farm? If you cannot do it through the UI, I'm not sure you are going to have any additional luck through Feature activation. 500GB of content in a farm is not a lot, unless it is all in couple of large site collections perhaps in a single content database.

I would start by doing a health check on the farm to make sure that it is performing correctly.