Caplin Xaqua

A framework for building single-dealer platforms that enables banks to deliver multi-product trading direct to client desktops.

Caplin Xaqua is Caplin's single-dealer platform (SDP) framework; it provides a comprehensive set of APIs to support connection to banks' internal systems (via Caplin DataSource) using C, C++, Java™, and .NET, and to client applications (via Caplin StreamLink) using the Web, Adobe Flex™, Microsoft Silverlight™, Java, and .NET.

Our customers have a wide variety of requirements for client side technologies. In addition to supporting Caplin Trader, our Rich Internet Application (RIA) framework, Caplin Xaqua also provides APIs for other RIA development technologies including Silverlight and Flex.

It also has APIs for technologies more suitable for building local applications, such as Java and .NET. These client technologies can be mixed and matched, enabling the choice of the best technology for a particular job, without having to compromise on the supporting infrastructure or limiting the future choice of technologies.

Caplin Xaqua interfaces client applications with bank systems while decoupling client from server ensuring that changes in the bank systems do not impact client applications, and vice versa. It does this through an "anti-corruption layer" which normalises all trading, pricing, and permissioning data. So the client is de-coupled from the bank's providing systems, while still being built on their models and workflows.

The Caplin Xaqua SDP framework consists of a number of components, each with a specific purpose:

• Caplin DataSource - links Caplin Xaqua components together and enables them to exchange data with a financial services firm's internal trading, pricing, permissioning and messaging systems.
• Caplin Transformer - an event-driven real-time business rules engine.
• Caplin Liberator - a financial Internet hub that delivers trade messages and market data to and from subscribers over any network, tunnelling automatically through proxy servers and firewalls.
• Caplin StreamLink - a set of APIs and underlying code libraries that allow client applications to exchange pricing, trading and permissioning data with Caplin Liberator
• Caplin Console - an application for monitoring the behaviour and performance of the other components in Caplin Xaqua
• Caplin Director - a tool for managing SDP users and permissions in real time

This combination of components implements not just high-speed low-latency message streaming, but also a set of functionality required for financial trading applications that includes:

• TradePipes - a mechanism for easily implementing trade flows.
• The ability to route and conflate market data.
• The application of user entitlements and permissioning in real time.

Caplin Xaqua is built on Caplin's massively scalable, ultra-low latency, Internet technology. It manages all aspects of real-time data streaming, both to the client and back to the bank's systems. It provides resilience, failover, load-balancing, and latency management. These features ensure that the end user has a high performance trading application suited to their needs, while the bank can rely on continuous connectivity that ensures the most up-to-date prices are available for each trade.