RFC is a well-established and trusted approach to integrating different applications in an SAP environment, but Web services, now supported with SAP Web Application Server 6.40, is emerging as a viable alternative based on open standards. Each approach has its strengths and limitations depending on the situation at hand, so when does it makes sense to use which? This article compares and contrasts the Web service and RFC approaches in terms of performance and transactional behavior to help you assess the role that each technology should play in your own SAP environment.
Prof. Dr. Willi Nuesser
Prof. Dr. Willi Nüßer holds the Heinz Nixdorf foundation chair for applied computer science at the University of Applied Sciences (FHDW) in Paderborn, Germany. His research and consulting interests include Web services in general and in the SAP environment. Before joining FHDW, he worked for six years at SAP headquarters in Walldorf, Germany, where he was responsible for several projects in the SAP LinuxLab. He is the co-author of “SAP Interface Programming” and “SAP on Linux – Architecture, Implementation, Configuration, Administration.”
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