FTP or E-Mail

[TimTDP]

I am busy putting together a project that includes sending data to an Internet website. The data is small - maybe 10K of data at a time.
Is it best to send it a text file via FTP or as an e-mail?
Costs are important because data will be sent in a GSM network

 

[Stalkerh]

I think it really depends on how the data needs to be processed , if it needs to be done instantly then go with Email if not i guess u can use FTP. Although i am not sure why you chose FTP and not something like like web services.

 

[sn3rd]

Surely sending the data to an Internet website would be best accomplished using a webservice of sorts?

Edit: As mentioned above

 

[TimTDP]

Can you please explain webservice?

 

[sn3rd]

Can you please explain webservice?

If you are, indeed, trying to send data to a website, then the website has a URL and hosting capabilities. You will also likely be able to use a scripting language of sorts to manage uploads. This will probably be the easiest way of doing what you want to do.

 

[sn3rd]

In fact, if the data is being used to provide content on the website via a database, you could put the data directly into the database.

 

[monkeeh]

Depends how lightweight your message needs to be. Email adds overhead, so do webservices if you are passing xml, which is most likely the case. You need to weigh up the two, i.e lightweight vs assurance that the message goes through. There are many ways to achieve this, you just need to choose the one that best suits you

 

[guest2013-1]

Can you please explain webservice?

a webservice exposes a function or sub on your webserver through code (that you wrote) to process something. So a Windows Application can be scripted (or server side with PHP or ASP) to be able to upload/process the file.

However, you'd need a Windows Server for that (not sure PHP has web services?)

Anyway, to your question. If it's small, it wouldn't matter if you use FTP or Email. Your receiving end would need to process it still, and unless you're running PHP and have a Cron job setup to process the FTP directory it will be uploaded to (or have a custom POP3 service running on the server, which means PHP/Cron to periodically check an inbox for new incoming files to process) I don't think it's the best way to do this.

I reckon, a simple "Admin" login with the ability to upload the file. Once they click submit, you can then process the file without having a cron job on there to check it (assuming you use PHP, if ASP, it's tougher as Windoze doesn't come with a nice cron job feature you can setup without having to RDP to the server and schedule one manually... which would be impossible if the hosting is shared)

there's a million ways to skin a cat. so it's up to you to decide (and tell us) which technology/your programming ability and status of server host before we can suggest the best solution

You can even ZIP the file if it's text to make it smaller than 10k and then process the ZIP file automatically server side.... pretty nifty thing this programming gig