Chatting in XML Financial Messages

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Chatting in XML Financial Messages
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How Does It Work?

An appropriate XML-enabled application could, for example, handle FixML messaging. The FixML messaging application introduces a "from concept to delivery" framework, focusing on the following aspects of financial messaging.

Treatment of the trade cycle as a unit, rather than as a group of loosely related messages and processes.
Real-time monitoring of transaction status by all involved parties.
Production of electronic forms that allow the message content to be contextual, visible, and editable.
Execution of all the business rules and functions in real time.
Combine XML messaging with conventional non-XML formats, closing the interapplication technology gap.
Providing value-added client services.

The Application Objects

An application development scenario consists of modeling application objects, their behavior, and interrelations from the preliminary analysis phase, through testing, and onto maintenance of a production system. Using an appropriate XML-enabled engine, we may graphically model the business scenario. In effect though, this model is directly setting up the working system. It may then be enhanced and used as an operational XML application.

The first stage of the modeling process is FixML scanning and investigation. This results in the formation of application objects, their properties, and contextual interrelationship. These are shown in the following figure.

Providing this data-centric view of FixML messages allows immediate incorporation of XML data and business logic into an all-inclusive application. Indeed, any original XML source could be integrated into the conceptual model of the system (click image for full-size view).

Additional Business Rules

The maximum amount of information that could be extracted from XML message definitions describes the interior parts (elements) of the message, but it can never reflect the interrelationship between different types of messages.

By enhancing the conceptual model of the system it is possible to introduce additional business rules, which are not contained in the original FixML. Such extensions do not cause any changes in FixML messages or their DTD (Schema). Messages and their structures remain the same as they were prior to the extensions.

This diagram defines a trade unit consisting of different types of messages: Order, Execution, Allocation, and the Allocation's acknowledgement messages (ACK) (click image for full-size view).

External Services

Once the trade unit is defined, it is possible to enhance the application model to allow use of external services. For example, a new real-time interface to NASDAQ ("Security Rate Query"), is introduced by an application modeler.

The FixML object model is linked to an external system providing real-time information from NASDAQ about security rates (click image for full-size view).