Alex,
I have a project where my application with the timer is checking the dropped file on the customer FTP. The program logs into FTP, checks if the file is there, retrieves the file, and then deletes the file. This way, the file is only processed once. And you are right, you have to make sure that a lot of checks are done before you delete the file. And it is very much doable. In another application instead of deleting the dropped file the application moves it into an "archive" folder for possible check for a conflict or troubleshooting.
>Dmitry-
>
>Thanks for the suggestion. That's pretty much what I am thinking too. The customer can use secure FTP or HTTPS to security transmit a file(s) to my customer's website host, and my application can periodically check for new files and bring them down for processing. We'll need to do the usual stuff to make sure orders get processed only once and perhaps allow the customer to retrieve an updated version of the file with order numbers as confirmation, but that's just details.
>
>Thanks.
"The creative process is nothing but a series of crises." Isaac Bashevis Singer
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"If a nation values anything more than freedom, it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort or money that it values more, it will lose that too." W.Somerset Maugham
