9 important factors to consider before changing your FIX engine!
FIX engine is a FIX protocol-based messaging infrastructure designed for high-frequency trading and to facilitate the online trading and it is available in Java & .NET. FIX engine is an implementation of FIX protocol and a piece of software required to establish FIX connectivity. FIX messages which carry trading orders electronically in the form of tag and value is composed, parsed and understood by FIX engine.
FIX engines are also responsible for establishing FIX connectivity between client and broker or client and exchange. FIX is now used by a large group of firms and vendors. It has clearly emerged as the preeminent global messaging protocol. FIX has grown from its original buy-side to sell-side equity trading roots and exchanges, ECNs and other industry participants now use FIX.
Users can easily integrate FIX Engine with any other software application such as API, FIX implementation tools, monitor suits and simulator. FIX engine is a suite of program built for session management, FIX Standard Message framing, connectivity, listener and initiator etc.
Benefits of standardizing communications using FIX protocol
Some of the benefits of the widespread use of a standard messaging protocol are
- Reduced cost and complexity of integrating various internal activities
- Increased ability to share infrastructure in terms of software, hardware and support staff
- Less need to rekeying and translate data, which lowers costs and results in fewer errors
- Easier monitoring of the overall positions of markets and flows within them (eg, for regulatory purposes) as the inputs are supplied in the same format and use of the same protocol
9 Things to consider before changing your FIX engine!
- Capabilities of the Engine:
- Should support all FIX versions with all FIX tags
- Simultaneous support for more than one version Should support all the Asset classes. Should support High Availability Low latency and message processing per second With native TLS/SSL support Support to Crypto Trading
- Support and Services:
- Access to customization
- On-site and 24*7 support should be available
- Shouldn’t charge a license fee for an engine in a disaster recovery / stand-by environment
- Cost and pricing should be reasonable and flexible
- The engine should include the tools that allow monitoring of your FIX sessions
- Best Performance Practices:
- FIX engines give prominence to the number of messages they can process a second with extremely high-performance configurations that may exceed the requirement. So, choose wisely.
- Few engines do not store messages, and this makes them to achieve a high-speed appearance.
- Messages stored in a database by the engine should have the ability to restore in the event of a hardware failure.
- Ease of Operability:
- Support for other financial messaging protocols (i.e., EMAPI, ITCH/OUCH, SWIFT)
- Encryption
- The ability to log data to a flat file or database
- High-availability readiness
- Integration with FIX session monitoring tools
- It should be capable to run on Window and Linux OS
- Hardware Requirements:
- Should support different hardware requirements for the FIX engine chosen.
- Understanding of the FIX infrastructure
- Any benchmarking performance statistics doesn’t dependent only on the FIX engine, but the hardware requirement
- Platform Support:
- FIX engines Should run on all platforms
- Focus on platform support between flexibility and performance
- Integrated Tools along with FIX Engine:
- Few vendors integrate tools to monitor FIX connections and alerting functionality.
- Should support with the integration of in-built testing tools, certification harnesses, and FIX simulators.
- The automated testing tools should reduce the need for initial testing and the cost associated with the development for faster go-to-market
- Secured Framework:
- Network option settings.
- Capable to run Initiator and acceptor instance on single engine.
- Incoming message validation and reject
- Malformed message skip or validation
- Single and Multiple Thread session message control capability
- Connectivity Failure Handling
- Deep interface implementation should be configured on engine code and engine should direct the connection failure message to application layer which will recover the lost session.
Transform your trade communication with the substantial operational and cost advantages through PhiFIX Engine and enable seamless trading with low latency communication. Sensiple offers flexible delivery options and as well it delivers highly scalable end-to-end FIX Enterprise solution with 24/7 customer support.
