ODBC vs RFC connectivity - which is faster?

[Former Member]

Hi,

I have a SAP Application Datastore to which I connect to - one connection is using ODBC which connects to the underlying database and another connection is RFC connection where I am using ABAP Data Flows with RFC Data Transfer.

I have a dummy job that directly pulls data from the Open hub table and dumps it into a Template table. My ODBC job runs at twice the speed of my RFC job, but the BASIS team is adamant that RFC is faster than ODBC and want us to move to RFC (mainly due to security concerns). Could you guys throw light on the same? Am I doing the ABAP development wrong? Or like we believe, is ODBC connection faster than RFC connection with BODS 4.2?

[former_member187605 · Accepted solution]

My experience too is that direct data-level access is always faster than going thru the ABAP layer. But your Basis team is right, you should not connect directly to the underlying database, unless in very exceptional cases, e.g. when dealing with Z-tables.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi ashok,

1.The first point what we know is when we installed any application on operating system  defualt we get odbc connection set up. there we can give credentials as we required.it is easy process

2.if you are with sap environment we need to rfc connection between source to desinger (means sap ecc to sap ds )  that is reconmended by sap corporation

3.so here what we observe is a:windows--->odbc---->sap ds(three layers)

                                            b:windows----->odbc---->sapapplication------>sapds(four layers)

when its consumption of task manger odbc setup is faster when compared rfc connection.

4.as per best practice go with rfc while working especially with sap applications

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Mahesh,

Thanks for your reply. My question was more along the lines of not which one is faster to set up. It is basically say we have both RFC and ODBC connection set up, and the source table has millions of records with 50 columns, which data transfer method would be faster?

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Dirk,

Thanks for your quick response. Is there any material that I could refer to which states the same? Or is there any explanation as to why ODBC is faster than RFC?

Thanks,

Ashok

[former_member187605 · Accepted solution]

Isn't it obvious that an application going straight to the data (ODBC) will outperform one that has to pass through an additional application layer (RFC)?

Have a look at Best way to read data from SAP ECC for the different options for getting data out of ECC.