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Even HL7 which is used for healthcare communication is still very often communicated over file drops as well. Honestly it has some great advantages in terms of simplicity. Need to reprocess a file? Put it in the folder. Fail to process? Move it to a different folder for later viewing. The biggest issue is just having good SFTP server and client solutions that are scalable on multiple platforms.

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I never knew about HL7, thanks for sharing.

I agree that simplicity and open standards will win. SFTP is straightforward and has worked well in the past. In banking and finance, SFTP is what powers most programmatic corporate banking. Eventually, I think we'll see SFTP and message queues (like SQS) used more often as processing speeds up. I believe message queues are what powers much of real time payment processing already (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36805571)

Another approach is to treat it as a document exchange process that is done over REST or RPC. Message queues are attractive though in that they are easily bidirectional.

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