Multi-platform File Adapter

Question

We are currently looking at the requirements for several new processes involving use of the File Adapter functionality. Our production BPM environment is RedHat Linux 4, while this particular legacy system runs on Windows 2000. The legacy system is already configured to read and write XML files into Windows file shares. Some integration processes should kick off when XML files are written to the file shares. Other processes will write XML files back into the file shares. I am looking for recommendations as to the best architectural approach to dealing with this multi-platform problem within the BPEL PM. As I see it, we have a few of options:
1.     Utilize FTP server functionality rather than direct file access to read and write the files in a platform-independent manner.
2.     Use some other technology to bridge between the platform-specific file directories and something less dependent on platform. For example, pick up the files from the Windows directory and write them to an AQ queue. Then feed the BPEL process from the queue.
3.     Run BPM on multiple platforms and allow the Windows instance to handle Windows file drops while the Linux instance handles Linux file drops. Obviously there is a cost penalty here as well as complexity during deployment.
Any thoughts or experiences are welcome.
Thank you.

Answer 1

Have you looked into relative path's? that would solve the issue of different OS path names.
Also, you might want to consider the deployment descriptors you can use when compiliing, you can set enviroment specific variables like paths in there.