Caplin Trader

Caplin Trader is an HTML5-ready Web framework for building browser-based trading applications on Caplin Xaqua

With Caplin Trader, you can create a powerful, highly differentiated online trading offering in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost of developing from scratch. Caplin Trader is a native Web application framework that requires no downloads or plug-ins, and works in all popular browsers. It makes full use of HTML5, CSS3 and WebSockets in browsers that support these, but still delivers a great user experience in older browsers where some or all of these capabilities are not available.

Caplin Trader contains a suite of configurable trading and information display GUI components and services but also allows you to easily embed any existing Web content. You can build your Web application to look exactly as you want, to contain what your users need and to allow your users as much, or as little, freedom to configure the interface as you wish. Here's an example:

Example FX trading screen
Click on image to enlarge

Here are some more example screenshots, all from the same system. Click on a thumbnail to enlarge the image (requires popups enabled):

 

Caplin Trader requires no installation procedure at the client, which means you can on-board clients quickly without the need for a large support team or local administrator privileges. Because the client runs entirely in the browser without any locally installed components you can change, update and enhance your application's features and behaviour as often as you wish, and your users will get the new experience as soon as they log on. No downloads, no local upgrades and no problems with operating system compatibilities.

The system’s domain specific components are easily extensible, allowing your team to focus on delivering and implementing your business logic and workflows rather than creating custom objects from scratch. 

The system’s user interface (UI) consists of five display components which are easily extended and enhanced to support your business logic. These components are designed to interact with each other to deliver a compelling user experience (UX).

• Grids: Grids are used to filter and sort the data that is displayed in Caplin Trader’s main tables. Grids can be specified in XML and extended in JavaScript. Caplin Trader's grids dynamically load visible data as the user scrolls, resulting in faster loading times and the ability to handle extremely long lists of instruments.

• Tickets: Tickets are used to differentiate trade workflow. Within Caplin Trader, it is easy to create tickets to match workflow required by trade venue.

• Tiles:  Trade tiles can be launched by clicking on a price in the grid, They can also support one-click trading if this is something you want to provide. Trade tiles are customisable so that your business logic can be easily inserted.

•  Blotters:  Blotters are used within Caplin Trader to display historic trade information so that users can see how a trade has progressed. Using blotters, users are able to configure any execution data and workflow.

• Charts:  Charts are used within the system to deliver real-time or static data to the client. As zero footprint technology, there is no need to install plugins to view charts in Caplin Trader. The charts have an intuitive UI so that users can easily manipulate data.

An example of each of these display components is provided in the Caplin Trader "reference implementation" which can act as a starting point for your own development, or simply as an example of how to use the framework.

Caplin Trader's permissioning mechanism allows you to assign different permissions to different components. The permissions infrastructure allows you to apply per-user pricing and different workflows both for segments and users within segments.  You can also use different layouts for different user segments. So your retail users, corporate treasurers and institutional clients can each have unique and relevant interfaces while your internal sales traders and proprietary traders can have access to features specific to their trading activities; all based on the same infrastructure.

Caplin Trader achieves 99.999% availability in two ways. Firstly, the system monitors quality of service by sending heartbeat messages to ensure there is no latency or stale data. Secondly, the system features automatic seamless component failover in the event of any system failure.

Caplin Trader is a Caplin Xaqua application, and sits on top of the Caplin Xaqua server-side framework as shown below:

Caplin Trader and Caplin Xaqua - technology architecture