Idonix,
a custom software development
company specialising in show control systems, was engaged by a major UK broadcaster to provide
data integration and graphics automation systems for their
2008 US Presidential
Election coverage.
One of the requirements was to download and process substantial quantities of election result data from an Associated Press ftp server. Rather than write our own ftp synchronisation software, we found an existing product that fitted our needs exactly - WatchFTP. It was extremely straightforward to configure WatchFTP to download files as they were updated by the Associated Press systems, and not only that - we were able to use the Run a batch script action to bulk load each updated file into our SQL Server database.
However when we arrived at
the customer's site we had an
unforeseen problem - from their network we were only able to get access to the
Associated Press servers through an ftp proxy, which unfortunately WatchFTP did not support. We
contacted GdP software to see if they had any suggestions - and within 24 hours
they sent us a new WatchFTP build with proxy support. From then on WatchFTP ran
flawlessly, continuously executing ten separate tasks every five minutes over a
two week period with no crashes or memory leaks.
In summary, WatchFTP is a great product with superb support! Thank you GdP Software!
Pete Griffiths
Idonix Limited