Improvement on flag files and data files?

I have a existing project (non-web), with multiple components/programs running on different machines. The programs use flag files e.g. "xxx.request" "xxx.done" to signal each other. And also data files are created and put in a particular directory and passed to another program to process. The data files and flag files are all in a shared stor开发者_运维技巧age.

The pros of this approach is that it is really easy to implement. But I feel that this is not good in the long run.

What other alternatives do I have, so that I can make substantial improvement.

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I suggest you use a messaging system for sending messages. Files don't make a good reliable, secure, mangageable, or fast protocol for sending data between applications. In Java I would use JMS which has many implementations which have C# and C++ clients.