SOAP vs RFC - performance and pros and cons

[Former Member]

Hi,

I have been playing around with the SAP .NET Connector 2.0 between an ASP.NET 1.1 application and SAP passing in either SOAP or RFC connection strings to the proxy classes as a proof of concept for some integration work required for our existing customer website and teh SAP system replacing our legacy applications.

Other than issues relating to the ports that need to be opened in Firewalls between application environments can anyone provide me with any information or point me in the direction of any documentation regarding the performance differences between and pros and cons of using these two protocols?

The impression I get is that RFC performs better than SOAP due to the XML conversion overhead inherent in using SOAP calls.

I know that the ESOA direction of SAP means that SOAP is the desired protocal in the long run but is there any reason why one should be used in preference to the other in the scenario menttioned above?

Sorry if there is an obvious answer and thank you in advance for any help.

Andy

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

We did a lot of load tests to find answers on how the protocol can have impact on the performance. With our test systems RFC was about 3 times faster than SOAP and the network traffic was doubled with SOAP (approx.). And it seems to me that RFC offers more parallel processes (for multithreading application), but I'm not hundred percent sure on that point.

We used rel. 640 with Web AS, Client was .NET Connector and ERPConnect with .NET 1.1 and .NET 2.0.

./.

Krishtan