Financial Market Data Web Services – Xignite Blog

In the next 5 minutes, you could get $5 worth of plumbing services, $30 worth of legal advice or $17 worth of psychotherapy. Or, you could just spend your next five minutes building a real-time stock quote widget. Don’t think it can be done in 5 minutes? Check out a video showing us doing it in less time.

Here’s how you can do the same thing using PHP and Eclipse, although the same basic process can be used for any language and any IDE:
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Every five minutes, a business in the U.S. catches fire, someone in the UK swears, and a clock that took 5 years and £1 million to build before being unveiled by none other than Stephen Hawking, finally tells the time accurately for a second or two.

What will you do with your next 5 minutes?

Here’s a thought: Why not build a real-time forex currency converter? Sound like fun? If so, give it a try using the steps below. Or, if you’d rather leave all the fun to someone else, why not just watch a video of us doing it?

Here’s how it’s done: Read more

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A few years back, if you asked your IT professionals about Cloud Computing, you probably would have received a blank stare, followed up with an “I love my servers” comment. At that time, even the term “Cloud Computing” was plagued by confusion, uncertainty and a fair amount of misinformation. Early misconceptions were further reinforced by the many ‘cloud flavors’ being lumped into one term, SaaS, PaaS, utility computing, virtualized computing, managed services, resource computing, elastic computing and so on. Many concluded that Cloud Computing was more a buzzword than a definable technology.

Today, that is no longer the case, with an overwhelming consensus affirming that the winds of change are blowing in the clouds favor. The desire to move into the clouds is quickly turning into a necessity, with a wide range of internal and external forces leading the charge. Redundancy, efficiency, availability, simplicity, stability or plain & simple economics, every entity has its own unique set of reasons for moving into the clouds. With its inherent time and cost benefits, It’s no surprise that there is a growing wave of support for Cloud Computing, with some of that support coming from some unlikely places. Read more

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I really liked how Max Bowie characterized Xignite as “disruptive” in a piece he published in Inside Market Data earlier this week, entitled “Appetite for Disruption.” He was covering our latest release of equity options web services XigniteOptions and XigniteRealTimeOptions, but his “disruptive” moniker couldn’t be more appropriate for all of Xignite as a company.

He dubbed us as “disruptive” because our equity options services changed the economics of getting options data so much that customers like iVerit are now able to create new businesses delivering this high-volume, high-expense market data at rates affordable even to small private investors over small, affordable devices like the iPhone.

But the truth is that virtually every time we launch a new web service, we see this pattern of disruptive technology creating new opportunities to penetrate existing markets much more deeply. That’s because it’s the on-demand delivery model itself, not any particular web service, that creates the order-of-magnitude changes in economics that cause disruption and new opportunities to deepen existing markets.

So thanks to Max for giving us a rep as a high-tech company running amok causing market depth and disruption wherever we go.

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What does the Albanian Lek, Dominican Peso, Indonesian Rupiah and 140 other global currencies have in common?  They can all be found in the newly updated XigniteCurrencies section.  Redesigned from the ground up, the new currencies section has been expanded to provide the tools and information necessary to get up and running with Global Currency Data.

In addition to covering over 85% of the world’s currencies, there are several improvements that we are very excited about.  First, we have expanded the section to include two new areas, one dedicated to providing detailed product information, and the other dedicated to providing comprehensive developer resources.  We have simplified the sites navigation, while also adding cool new features including several educational videos, expanded product information and an entirely new set of interactive demo applications.  We have even created a step-by-step video on how to get up and running with a simple real-time currency converter.  If you haven’t visited the section recently, you should give it a peek.

Product Resources - Currency Overview - - What Is On-Demand - - Live Forex Demos - - Global Data Coverage -

Developer Resources - How-To Video - - Getting Started - - Forex WSDL File - - Web Service Operations -

What’s most exciting are the countless ways our global currency data can be used. Our customers have proven that it doesn’t matter if you’re an Aviation Catering Company, Armored Transportation Service, National Menswear Retail Chain, Global Automotive Manufacturer or Cool Online Gaming Startup, with XigniteCurrencies, the applications are truly endless.

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Everyone has been talking about how much smaller this year’s SIFMA Technology Management Conference was when compared with previous years, fewer exhibitors and fewer attendees.  But for Xignite, this year’s show was the biggest ever. If you missed us at this year’s SIFMA TMC, we hope to see you next year. Feel free to take a look at the 2009 Xignite SIFMA TMC Photo Gallery by Clicking Here.

Despite the fact that this year’s SIFMA Show was scaled down quite a bit, we were positively overwhelmed with demand at the Xignite booth.  Our staff of seven was slammed every minute they were on the floor, answering questions, giving product demos and handing out free Xignite goodies.  Even after show hours were over, our booth stayed filled with people wanting to talk about on-demand web services.  Even when walking the halls, I overheard many others talking about Xignite, our cool new products and exciting activities that we were sharing at the show.  In retrospect, I wish we had brought a staff of twelve to handle all the demand.

Maybe it was just the Xignite shot machine and free booze we passed out. For me, it was fun demonstrating how it’s a lot easier & cheaper to get data “by the glass” (aka on-demand) rather than getting data “by the fire hose” (aka bulk files and data feeds).  If it was alcohol that brought the hordes a-knocking at our booth, that would give a whole new meaning to the phrase, “generating buzz.”

Or maybe we saw so much demand because people just couldn’t resist the power of our free t-shirts, pens, mouse pads and other freebies.  Maybe it was the awesome VIP Event that we hosted at the Forbes Galleries. Or perhaps everyone heard about us from the recent publicity surrounding Xignite, like the amazing coverage in Inside Market Data or product announcements surrounding XigniteOnDemand and XigniteCorporateActions.

In truth, I don’t think any amount of publicity, bribery or booze could have generated the amount of buzz we saw.  Having talked to many at the show, I got a strong sense that people are more serious than ever about finding game-changing technology, like on-demand web services.  Over and over again I heard people looking for way to simplify data projects, dramatically cut costs and reduce the time it takes to delivery new data initiatives to market.  In these categories, Xignite is the only show in town.

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Many of the folks visiting our website looking for market data have previous experience with more traditional (or as we like to say legacy) data feed technology, but have not used Web services.   Or, they are new to market data in general and have difficulty cutting through all the technical detail and marketing-speak to make an honest appraisal of what is best for their application.  If this sounds like you, then take a look at this quick side-by-side comparison below.

To make a sound business decision, you need to ask yourself the practical question of “Why should I buy the cow, when I can get the milk through the fence?”  In truth, there can be very good reasons for buying the cow.  For example, you drink an awful lot of milk.  Or, maybe you are also a really big meat eater.  But, if your business isn’t dairy farming, then you are usually better off just buying the milk.

Contrasting On-demand Web Services and Data Feeds

(click on the image to enlarge)

Following this analogy, let me state out front that Web services are NOT right for every application.  If you are developing an algorithmic trading program that requires very low latency custom pricing data, or you belong to a gigantic financial institution that has a massive, centrally provisioned data feed, a strategic SOA initiative, and an IT department chock full of C++ programmers just waiting around for their next integration project, then you probably don’t need web services.  However, if writing custom data parsers is not your forte and fooling around with market data is not the core competency of your business, but merely a means to a higher value end, then we may have just what you need.

One often confusing element that is worth clarifying is that on-demand Web services are not only Web services, they are also on-demand.  That is, many market data vendors bundle application programming interfaces (APIs) in wih their feed products (often as a free add-on).  And, some of these APIs may support Web service standards or at least provide XML formatted output.  However, this does not change the business economics of buying data in bulk and deploying and managing the infrastructure to host and distribute it yourself, versus accessing it one transaction at a time over the Internet.

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