Depending on how remote the server, perhaps you can just mount the remote directory locally and then process the files from within the mount point.

or perhaps you can rsync(1) a local directory with the one found on the remote hostt.

Ofcourse these both assumes a good quick link to the remove host, the ability to export filesystems, and perhaps even some sort of unix-like, and may be limited by access to the database you may be maintaining state in.