> Hello,
> 
> I am porting the FIX protocol to Squeak/Pharo.
> http://www.fixprotocol.org/
> 
> It is the Financial Information eXchange protocol. It is used by many firms 
> in the financial industries, stocks, forex, etc.


Excellent!


> 
> There is good documentation and also a semi-reference implementation in Java.
> http://www.quickfixj.org
> 
> I have a partial port started but I wanted a check with those who know more 
> than I about proper Smalltalk coding.
> 
> In the Java implementation there are over 2000 classes. In the protocol there 
> are approximately 90 message types and 956 field types.
> 
> I am initially creating the message classes as they form the basis of the 
> protocol and the fields are simply instance variables and methods in the 
> message classes.

do you have some examples because replying like that in the blue is difficult. 



> I am not porting the Java library. I am implementing the protocol in 
> Smalltalk from the documentation.
> 
> Initially I have created a Fix44Field class with its necessary variables.
> There are several versions of the Protocol and FIX 4.4 is the one required 
> for my application.
> 
> With this Fix44Field class I am creating a Dictionary with the 956 different 
> field types. I am planning on creating a constructor method which will create 
> the desired field from the information in the dictionary about the field and 
> its properties.

this sounds right. 
or you can have a method that takes a list and fill up

> 
> Am I way off base here? Should I really create the 956 classes necessary to 
> for each field in addition to the 90 or so message classes, and then I don't 
> know what else I haven't discovered yet. Having 1000+ classes just seems 
> unwieldy and naively it just doesn't feel like the Smalltalk way.

For me number of classes has never been a design criteria. Now is the behavior 
different on each of them? what are the variations?
Can we represent them as constant in a classVar somewhere?

> I could be wrong, but I haven't seen such an example to my memory. I don't 
> know enough about Java to know if it is good Java form either.
> 
> When I have a reasonably fleshed out, tested and working solution, I will 
> make the source available under a MIT license. I would love to see 
> Squeak/Pharo become an out of the box viable option for trading applications.

me toooooooooooo :)

> 
> Advise and wisdom greatly appreciated.
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Jimmie
> 


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