[This message was posted by Richard Labs of CL&B Capital Management, LLC <[email protected]> to the "Algorithmic Trading" discussion forum at http://fixprotocol.org/discuss/31. You can reply to it on-line at http://fixprotocol.org/discuss/read/9e0f18d2 - PLEASE DO NOT REPLY BY MAIL.]
Matt, FIXatdl is very much alive and moving forward. There admittedly been some slowing because of the market crash and broker/dealer merger into banks. Likewise there have large reductions in IT staff with most houses going into the mode of "cut ALL IT development, reduce all IT staff to the bare bones to just support existing applications". On the other end of this has been a natural shift in emphasis within the Work Group from BD emphasis (FIXatdl xml file production) to OMS emphasis (consume a variety of xml files, parse them, and make them all usable within the tier-1 OMS systems). While producing FIXatdl xml files only involves about a developer day learning the standard, and perhaps 2-4 hours per strategy after that to write error free xml, the one-time effort of OMS makers to come up to speed, develop and install parsers, and modify their production systems to incorporate FIXatdl files is much more resource intense. Knowing full well this is the case, after rallying 17 BDs to produce FIXatdl xml files, the WG totally shifted its very limited internal resources to working with selected tier-1 OMS providers to resolve all issues on that end (consumption of the xml) of the delivery chain. While we thought we really knew what we were doing after getting BDs to produce xml files, we have found the issues on the OMS side to be at least an order of magnitude more involved than we first expected. As they say, the devil is in the details... Thankfully however, prior to the market crash, we were well on our way with all that and had completed >90% of that OMS "punch list" with a very high degree of confidence that it met their virtually all their industry-wide needs. However, as you correctly have observed, with our WG spending all our (highly limited) resources on the OMS side, the BD's haven't been contacted in so long they have all but forgotten about us. There is no buzz at the BD's because we have largely totally ignored them though this phase. I can assure you however that the core group of BDs producing algos remain very much aware of FIXatl at the R&D level, and are very well positioned for the WG to get things settled on the OMS end. As I mentioned before, BD support is NOT difficult to rally. We have done that before with near 100% market participation, and will do that again when we are "done" with the rest of this. If there is anything we have learned during the first 24 months of this is that the bulge bracket BDs can move exceptionally quickly to exploit any perceived market opportunities. So, getting algo executing BDs to produce FIXatdl files will not be a hold up. In looking at the detailed use-cases on hundreds of actual algos and perhaps a dozen or so OMS systems in depth, plus reviewing some of FIXs longer range (3-5 year) technical plans we opted over the past several months to refactor the FIXatdl standard to absolutely isolate the GUI area from the "data contract" area - i.e. the data on the FIX wire (which, btw, is exactly the same as its always been so FIXatdl adoption requires zero FIX infrastructure change). Due to very scant WG resources, that last refactoring took a bit longer than expected and is now publicly exposed at http://fixprotocol.org/FIXatdl Our major constraint now REMAINS very limited WG resources working through the final stages of delivery on what will be FIXatdl v1.1 We have some "punch list" items left to go and all the documentation needs to be brought up to date. With XMLspy, current users can generate about 277 pages of documentation and get a very solid picture of things. However, it would be very useful for the WG to better elaborate on all the various features and how to use them. At FIX we are held up from submitting the V1.1 draft standard for final approval until we have that documentation finished in pristine publishable form. Right now we have to rally resources to that effort. We are operating with greatly reduced WG resources. Its like a neutron bomb went off and took out 20-40% of the IT bodies in our member organizations and the bodies remaing are working 24/7/365 to keep exsiting applications runing. Time to volunteer to the WG is very limited, so we are moving much more slowly than when things were "flush". What we really need are MORE voluntary final QA testers and documentation writers to speed up the delivery process. That is the only thing holding up FIXatdl at this point. Technically, we are on the one yard line. Best of all we have a nucleus of very active tier-1 OMS support so just as soon as this thing goes final we are not anticipating ANY problem getting the BDs to pump out xml files. Rick [You can unsubscribe from this discussion group by sending a message to mailto:[email protected]] --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Financial Information eXchange" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/FIX-Protocol?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
