Application: helping data feeds

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4919 Cervato Way
Santa Barbara
CA 93111 USA

tel 805-680-5377
fax 866-400-5504
info@quadron.com
sales@quadron.com

APPLICATIONS

Multiple Protocols Manage Western World Market Data

In 1989, a German data service provider offered the first satellite transmission of stock and marketing data to retail brokerage houses and small bank branches in Europe. As their customers grew in numbers and size, their requirements grew as well. Getting information fast was very important, but getting more information became critical.

They realized they needed more information than their information provider offered. They had to go directly to individual information sources. That meant multiple data feeds for stocks, for commodities and for news in multiple countries.

Diplomacy is the art of using the correct protocol to smooth communications between differing cultures. The firm's technical director accordingly became one of their leading diplomats. "You must understand," he explains, "we went from one data stream to almost twenty, and it seemed like each one had its own protocol. In the United States information comes to us over both HDLC and SDLC for the stocks. The commodities come on a 9600 baud async line. And here, in Europe, it's mostly X.25, but all at different speeds. One French agency even sends us news items over the radio. It's a 600 baud radio receiver with a serial output line."

"We have all these different data streams coming in at different speeds, but we wanted to handle all of the processing on PCs. So we created our own communications co-processor cards using transputers and lots of RAM, more than we could find on any off-the-shelf co-processors. Then we could write applications that manage the information as it comes in."

The firm's team tackled the multiple protocol problem with help from Quadron Corporation. The director admits the job would have been much harder without Quadron's qCF software tools for communication cards. "qCF gave us an Application Programming Interface (API) to develop high-level programs in C that run on commercially available cards. We didn't have to create all of the communication line drivers ourselves and writing the applications for the cards was a lot faster with Quadron's libraries. The project would have just been too big without qCF."

Managing the different protocols was just the beginning. Since the information they receive is raw data, "We normalize it twice. First, we pull the American information together in our office in New York and we have to format it before sending it to Germany. Once it's here, we combine it with all the European information and only then can it go over HDLC via satellite to our customers."

"Again, qCF made it possible to do on PCs. It lets you pass data between tasks on each card and between cards," he continues. "Each card acts like its own multi-tasking computer. So now the information comes in and the applications on the cards format it, prioritize it, and transfer it to other cards which handle the outbound satellite transmission. If it's quotes and trades, it goes out to our customers right away. If it's news stories or press releases, it's not as time sensitive."

"We also got a lot of good help from Quadron," the director continues. "They don't just say, 'try this and try that and call back later.' They were really interested in helping us get where we wanted to be, making our customers happy. And that makes us happy."

Spoken like a true diplomat.