Help Please- on design approach for data collection across n/w

[Sathvathsan Sampath]

hello ppl,
Could you ppl please comment on my approach. I would be very grateful for comments/criticism/help etc.

Task description: As part of billing data collection, I need to extract data from
flat files across the network from different machines (both NT and Solaris). The flat file
data on the different machines are in different formats and therefore I need to parse each
of them individually to extract the data in a pre-defined format and collate them into a
single file.
This large flat file then eventually needs to be uploaded onto another machine. This task
must be scheduled to run on a daily basis at a particular time. Please note that all the
clients/machines are within the firewall - they are on local n/w.
Also, the pre-defined format is not expected to change for a fairly long duration. And, the
number of clients is 3 and is not expected to increase beyond 5 over a long duration.
My proposed approach :
STEP 1: As a first task I gather the flat files in different formats distributed
across the network to a temporary working folder on my server (Solaris).
I could think of 2 possible soln here:
- (a) run platform-specific scripts on individual machines containing the flat files that
would ftp it to the Solaris box. On NT box, I would use the Task scheduler to do this. And
on other Unix box I would use a cron job to do the same.
-(b) Alternatively, to access the clients file system, write a server process listening to a
specific port and run client process on every machine that would transfer these files by
establishing a socket connection.
This would mean I need to have or install jvms on all the clients as I intend to write only
using java. I would once again write some scripts to schedule it run on a daily basis.
Basically, the question is a java based appln based on socket instead of using FTP.
- Or use RMI - maybe an overkill here. And besides, I am not familiar with it.
I am inclined choose the option (a) coz it can be implemented quickly.
Does anyone have a better idea than these & also please comment on the approach.

Thanks in advance,

------------------
- Sathvathsan Sampath

[Cindy Glass]

Why don't you use the UrlConnection class to connect to the remote server and communicate with it directly inside your java program?

<font size=2.5>
import java.io.*; 
import java.net.*; 
public class FtpTest { 
  public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception 
  { 
    FtpFile accounts = new ftpFile("ftp://login : password@hostname/filename"); 
  } 
} 
class FtpFile { 
  public FtpFile( String url) throws Exception 
  { 
    URL site = new URL(url); 
    URLConnection siteCon = site.openConnection(); 
    siteCon.setDoInput(true); 
    siteCon.connect(); 
    BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new     InputStreamReader(siteCon.getInputStream())); 
    String inputLine; 
    while((inputLine = in.readLine()) != null){ 
       System.out.println(inputLine); 
    } 
    in.close(); 
  } 
}