Faster trading systems, automated market making, best execution, smart order routing, and automated portfolio trading are driving the development of low-latency data processing infrastructures and internal multi-asset ticker plants. This trend is also seen in the rapid adoption of direct feeds. "Over the past two or three years, top-tier investment banks competing in the algorithmic and black-box trading space have been shifting to direct exchange and ECN data feeds, and investing in direct-feed infrastructures" (Wall Street and Technology, "High on Low-Latency Data" April 14, 2006).

The Skyler C3 Database, configured as a ticker plant cache, is an integral and important element of an in-house ticker plant. Combined with a feed handler and fast messaging system, it builds a powerful low-latency data processing platform that serves a whole host of real-time data processing needs required by hedge funds, asset management companies, and brokerage houses.

Skyler's ticker plant cache allows you to:

• Capture and store real-time, fundamental, and historical data
• Derive value added data on-the-fly
• Store data in a last value cache and tick collector
• Pose request-response and subscription based active queries

The Skyler C3 Database ticker plant cache receives market data trades & quotes feeds such as the CTS/CQS or the NASDAQ NQDS feed, and also from fundamental data sources. As the data comes in, the total volume, the trading high/low, and the VWAP can be calculated on the fly. The incoming, as well as the derived data, can then be stored in a last value cache. In addition, the incoming ticks can be stored in a tick collector or time series store. The relational and time series stores can be analyzed using request-response queries. In addition, users can pose active queries that, for example, return the last price and volume, current VWAP, and high/low for a given symbol, as well as updates to the results sets. Event triggers or conditional notifications can be set to inform users based on conditional data criteria, or to simply return regular updates.

This ticker plant cache, offers a unique solution by combining the strengths of a stream processing engine, a real-time cache and a time series database. In addition, it offers incredible speed advantages, allowing update rates exceeding 200,000 messages/s. The system can be easily configured varying the value-added data calculations or storage functionalities defined in the XML configuration file. The ticker plant is easy to integrate with existing applications, because the Skyler API allows developers to embed or connect any loader application.

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