I’m conflicted on this one. Here’s the situation –
I have a bunch of PDF files arriving in a folder from an external application (beyond my control) on a Windows 2003 server. These PDF files eventually get printed by my application by looking at the dates on the file (i.e. “print today’s PDFs”), and then are generally held for a month or so before being deleted. They can be automatically printed, or manually printed by a user.
As a convenience to the user (data we don’t act upon) I’d like to show which files have already been printed. This application has been fairly standalone and very simple, the way I like it.
Should I consider using file bits (i.e. Archive bit or something) to differentiate between files that have been printed and take the chance that a backup program could run, -or- increase the testing/maintenance overhead of the application by creating a data source for it (cross-reference table in XML) and introduce another “moving piece”?
You could consider keeping the information self-contained, without misusing flags, by using NTFS alternate data streams.