notifications system using "the files"? bad idea?

[Paul Dupuis]

So you would be using sockets to send a list of 1 or more file names
(notifications) across the network to other computers?

If so, I am not sure there is any significant performance difference
than having the notifications in a database.

The only practical difference may be the ease of implementation
depending of your expertise with SQL databases or not.

Since I assume it is your application that will received file lists from
other computers and write them to a user notification folder as well as
fetch 'the files' from that folder to check for messages, I don't think
you could ever run into any issues where the directory is being written
to at the same time it is being read. Even if, the OS essentially
handles that for you.