Suppose users of application A want to see the data updated by application B as frequently as possible. Unfortunately app A or app B cannot use message queues, and they cannot share a database. So app B writes a file, and a batch job periodically checks to see if the file is there, and if load loads it into app A.

Is there a name for this concept? A very explicit and geeky description: "running very frequent batch jobs in a tight loop to emulate near real time".

This concept is similar to "polling". However polling has the connotation of being very frequent, multiple times per second, whereas the most often you would run a batch job would be every few minutes.

A related question -- what is the tightest loop that is reasonable. Is it 1 minute of 5 minutes or ...? Recall that the batch jobs are started by a batch job scheduler (e.g. Autosys, Control M, CA ESP, Spring Batch etc.) and so running a job too frequently would causes overhead and clutter.