MDDL Version 1.0 Specification

SIIA/FISD Launches Market Data Definition Language

MDDL Promotes Interoperability and Defines a Standard Taxonomy For Market Data

Washington. November 02, 2001.

The Software & Information Industry Association's (SIIA) Financial Information Services Division (FISD) today launched Market Data Definition Language (MDDL) Version 1.0 in London at the 5th World Financial Information Conference. MDDL is a publicly available standard that provides a generic XML-based message format and glossary of fields needed to describe financial instruments, corporate events, and market related indicators. The function of MDDL is to promote data interoperability as well as to provide a standard taxonomy for market data.

The MDDL Version 1.0 Specification is now available at http://www.mddl.org.

According to Michael Atkin, Director of FISD "Our members wanted transparency of market data content in a consistent format in order to solve two business problems. The first was to enable the industry to shift resources from low value-added and costly functions of normalizing multiple data formats to higher value added functions of data applications. The second was to develop a standard glossary of terms and definitions so that people working with data delivered from multiple sources could understand what they were working with as well as how it related to their specific applications."

Version 1.0 covers equities, mutual funds and indices. Future versions will be expanded to include all financial information necessary to account, analyze, and trade within a market. The initial use of MDDL is for end-of-day and snapshot applications but it has been designed to be extensible to streaming, historical, and other applications as appropriate.

Mark Hunt, Director of XML Strategy at Reuters and member of the MDDL Steering Committee commented "We are pleased to have been instrumental in the definition of the MDDL V1.0 standard. It is an important milestone in the financial services industry's use of XML, and will allow vendors and users alike to make more of their data. Reuters is taking an active role in the development of a range of XML standards, and combined with MDDL these hold the potential to revolutionize the way the financial markets work."

The Financial Information Services Division (FISD) provides a balanced and neutral business forum for exchanges, market data vendors, specialists data providers, brokerage firms and banks to address and resolve business and technical issues related to the distribution, management, administration and use of financial information. For further information, visit http://www.fisd.net.

The Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) is the principal trade association for the software and digital content industry. SIIA provides global services in government relations, business development, corporate education and intellectual property protection to more than 800 leading software and information companies. For further information, visit http://www.siia.net.

Prepared by Robin Cover for The XML Cover Pages archive. See "Market Data Definition Language (MDDL)."

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