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Related
Reports |
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 Market
Data Markup Language Presentation James E. Hartley, Bridge, Global Technical
Lead, Bridge Internet Toolkit, Dec. 2000
XML
for Market Data Jeremy Sanders, Merrill Lynch, Director, Global Application
Infrastructure, Dec. 2000 Market
Data Markup Language Specification Version 0.12 PDF File (160
KB) Click here for downloading
help. Nov. 14, 2000 XML:
The Future of Data Exchange
Martin McCaig, Solutions Marketing Director, Reuters Ltd. presentation on XML,
Sept. 2000 FISD
Industry Resources on XML |
FISD
is forming an XML for Market Data Working Group as a result of the (discussions
leading up to and) presentations given during the December 6-7 general meeting
in NYC. Members interested in participating on the working group should indicate
their interest and forward contact information to Michael
Atkin. The first working group meeting is being targeted for January 2001.
At
this stage, the fundamental purpose of the Working Group will be to consolidate
industry efforts to define the parameters of the XML for market data discussion
(i.e. the fields needed to describe a security and its price). If the industry
is able to unify around a common size and scope definition, FISD is interested
in (1) serving as the facilitator of the discussion to create a standard, (2)
supporting and maintaining the standard as a permanent home and (3) coordinating
with the other major financial industry XML standards efforts such as NewsML (news),
FpML (derivatives), IRML (investment research) and XBRL (business reporting) as
appropriate.
Jeremy
Sanders (Merrill Lynch) and James Hartley (Bridge Information) presented the industry
with a solid starting point during the FISD meeting. According to Sanders, the
user firms are interested in extracting information from a vendor's (defined as
any information provider including exchanges and contributors) data feed into
common desktop applications. The requirement is not for an individual trader who
wants access to multiple sources of data, but rather for distributing information
to disparate systems throughout the organization. For that, the users need a standard
protocol and common data format. Sanders envisions using the XML standard primarily
for end-of-day and intra-day snapshot application feeds rather than for streaming
data. The additional benefits of XML are that it is inherently web-enabled as
well as transport independent.
Sanders further explained that once the standard is developed, implementation
could be easier than expected. For example, rather than converting to a native
in XML, vendors could continue to use their own internal formats and convert to
the XML standard at the users site through the use of mapping/translating software.
The difficult job is defining the elements and attributes, standardizing the nomenclature,
resolving symbology and "filling out" the standard.
Hartley
is global technical lead of something called Bridge Internet Toolkit. Bridge has
been on the leading edge of XML and has been working on a draft Market Data Markup
Language (MDML) specification for the past two years. According to Hartley, XML
is very functional for companies that are seeking to develop products that manipulate
and exchange market data. In his own words … "success is facilitated
if data is of use to more than one program or chain of users." Hartley went
on to maintain that while XML is "verbose and a data monstrosity," it
is a clearly defined, accepted, platform independent and extensible standard for
interchange and data expansion.
FISD
has also been beating the bushes on XML over the past month or so. We have had
open, positive and useful discussions with most of the major market data vendors.
All are interested in pursuing XML as an industry standard. FISD has also open
discussions with the other XML groups who have all indicated their interest in
working with us to ensure that the XML standard for market data is integrated
with the rest of the financial industry XML standards. At the moment, all signs
look promising.
Interest
in XML for market data is clearly growing. Since the presentation in NY, fourteen
companies (including Bank of NY, Bloomberg, Bridge, Dow Jones, Financial Times,
Goldman Sachs, Lipper, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Reuters, and Standard &
Poor's) have asked to join the working group. The draft MDML specification from
Bridge is posted on the FISD web site at: http://www.fisd.net/mdpolicy/1100_mdmlspec.pdf.
Once
again, please identify yourself if you are interested in participating on the
working group. We will publish our documentation on the web site and are creating
a BBS for working group communication.
