HTTP versus FTP over distributed data

Question

I have data files , mostly text files of very large size and they are spread over systems . Now i want to perform various operations like sorting , searching and other similar operations over these systems .

I have used parallel python so far in order to access other files in different systems and perform the operations like search. but i want to provide a web interface so that clients can send the request through it rather than writing programs for that.

I was wondering on whether to use HTTP or FTP request in order to fetch and process the request .

I apologise if the question sounds ridiculous , since i am myself figuring out stuff.

Answer 1

That pretty much depends on what you're trying to do, IMHO. If you're fetching the files and sorting/searching/whatever them client-side, FTP would be the appropriate protocol (since you're just transferring files). On the other hand, if the files are being processed (sorted/searched/etc) server-side, a HTTP POST request would be more appropriate.

So, judging from your post and what I think you're trying to do, I'd go with a HTTP POST request.