• Overview
  
• Financial Services Industry
  
• Telecommunications Industry
  
• Other Projects

E-Commerce Trading System - Financial Services Firm

Huge quantities of paper documents, manual processing and mainframe-based batch application were inhibiting the competitiveness of this financial services firm. Their response was to develop an on-line interactive applications and telephony-based brokerage services for their clients. With little in-house expertise in these emerging technologies, the firm engaged Tecnosoft to provide the requisite expertise.

The new e-commerce trading system consists of a transaction-web server, quote server, report server and voice recognition system. Tecnosoft supported the design and development of virtually all system components, as follows:

• The transaction-web server was developed on Solaris using C++, Java, and Unix scripts with a Sybase DBMS.
• The quote server, which provides financial pricing information in real time, was developed on Solaris using C++, TCP/IP socket programming, multi-threading with the Sybase DBMS, and connectivity to a third party ILX server.
• The report server provides reporting capabilities; it was developed on Solaris and Windows NT using C/C++, with Impromptu as the GUI and a Sybase database server.
• The Web server, which acts as the security server between the transaction and Netscape servers, was developed on Solaris, C/C++ and Sybase; most web templates were developed using HTML, Java Scripts and Java, with Hot-Dog software used to create faster HTML templates.

Account Reconciliation System - Major Brokerage Firm

The customers and agents of this brokerage house needed faster, easier access to their financial data. To this end, the firm decided that several of its mainframe-based batch processing systems needed to be Web-enabled with a state-of the-art multi-tier client/server architecture. As the complexity of this initiative unfolded, and the impact of the in-house IT staff became clear, the firm turned to Tecnosoft for technical support. Tecnosoft's tasks included many application design, development and implementation projects addressing:

• Core application business logic for complex tax rules
• Client-server-mainframe inter-process communications
• Application programming interfaces and process synchronization
• Data modeling
• Data extraction, transformation and loading for conversion between Web-based application servers and mainframe-based legacy applications
• Middleware and other application development tools, processes and methods
• Client/server processing architecture ("thin" versus "thick" clients) and client user interfaces.

The projects dealt with several mission-critical applications pertaining to:

• Tax processing for sales of mutual fund holdings
• Processing and posting trades and other financial transactions
• Reconciliation of holdings between the brokerage house and its custodian banks
• Optimization of income, amortization and withholding impacts for trading transactions
• Synchronization of the simultaneous updates to mainframe-based fund valuation applications from various front-end applications and background jobs.

The tools used in these projects for server applications and mainframe interfaces, C++, Sybase OpenClient, Java Application Server, PowerBuilder and Unix shell scripts were used. For client-side applications and interfaces, JDK1.2, jConnect4.2, WebGain VisualCafe 4, StructureBuilder 4, TCP/IP sockets and Unix shell scripts were used.

E-Commerce/On-line Trading - Financial Services Firm

This firm handles financial transactions for a global customer base. Their customers and agents needed the ability to access their accounts and conduct transactions on a 24/7 basis. An e-commerce marketplace was designated as the means to meet this need. Based upon our unique industry knowledge and technical expertise, Tecnosoft was contracted as a major participant in the design and development of the system.

The systems' applications provide the financial infrastructure that allows hedge funds to be tradable online as a secondary market via the Bermuda stock exchange. The system provides round the clock real time net asset value (NAV) information for all of the funds hosted on the platform, with bid/ask price and risk analysis for each fund. The systems' ability to enforce benign transparency for the hedge fund market is the core of the e-marketplace strategy.

The system has a multi-tier client/server architecture that consists of the Weblogic application server, Dynamo WebServer, Oracle database, Java application, Reuter's news feed and S&P risk server on a Sun/Solaris platform. The specific areas of Tecnosoft involvement included design and development of the real-time application to feed NAV, multiple front-end and back-end applications/interfaces.

Claims Processing System - Major Capital Investment Company

Moving from a mainframe batch processing system to a 3-tier client/server architecture requires in-depth system design and development skills. As this investment company determined, knowledge of the best available application development tools and techniques is critical for containing project costs and risks. Tecnosoft was called upon to provide such expertise.

Tecnosoft's contributions began with a pilot project to perform a feasibility study and benchmarks for a New Claims System. To replace existing screen scraping techniques for data collection, client/server middleware was integrated with CORBA open system software to allow applications on UNIX communicate with an OLE server application on Windows NT. Based upon an evaluation of several available tools, Visigenics' ORB Orbeline2.0 for C++ was selected for use here. The screen scraping software ran as an OLE server on NT, and an MFC-based Windows application developed as both a multi-threaded CORBA Server and an OLE client. As a bridge between CORBA and DCOM, the Orbix desktop tool and OCX controls were used to enable communications between a PowerBuilder application and the client-server middleware. The middleware, which provides DBMS, messaging and other services, contains a Business Logic module, a Utilities module, an Open Server Control Server, an Open Server Security Server and several Application Servers. This middleware ultimately became the CORBA Server and the OCX control generated by the desktop tools became the CORBA client.

Object oriented design and implementation techniques were employed extensively on both the front-end and middleware components. There are several client applications written in PowerBuilder and Visual C++; these run on Windows 95 and Windows NT 3.5 clients. The entire front-end was developed on Windows 95 with Visual C++, PowerBuilder and Windows Sockets 1. The PowerBuilder application communicates with middleware and external interfaces using sockets for asynchronous communication between clients, middleware and other devices such as CTI and a Fax Server.

Tecnosoft performed similar tasks for a Claims Processing System. This system is also a multi-tier client-server application, but here the middleware has an additional data source on an IBM Mainframe. Sybase DirectConnect server and OpenServerConnect library are used to make the CICS system on the Mainframe appear as another simple data source to the Sybase OpenServer Middleware. Tecnosoft also designed and implemented the most complex business logic module of the system, Cash Entry. This module is implemented in C++. It consists of a collection of middleware services and a set of C++ classes to implement business rules. Services are developed in middleware using Sybase OpenServer/OpenClient and other modules of the framework. Post-development customization, enhancement and maintenance services were also assigned to Tecnosoft.

Financial Management System - Major Federal Bank

This bank's Financial Management System (FMS) was its core financial application. It is a financial lending and accounting system that offers transaction based accounting at both the aggregate and bank level, daily and periodic interest accruals, MIS and advanced notice capabilities for servicing activity. With its mainframe-based batch processing, the system could not keep up with the demands for new application services and more timely access to data. The bank came to Tecnosoft for assistance in redesigning the legacy system to a client/server architecture, with improved access and processing capabilities.

As a key participant on the application design/development team, Tecnosoft provided the following critical services:

• Technical Project Management - technical evaluations, developing functional specifications, monitoring performance schedules, system test planning, quality assurance testing and implementation
• System Analysis, Development, and Specifications - PowerBuilder development standards, Sybase database administration, system acceptance test planning and implementation, and system reporting using SQR.

The application's new client/server environment used Sybase as the database, which resided in a Sun Sparc Unix environment with PowerBuilder as the front-end tool. Erwin was used as the CASE tool, with reports developed in SQR as well as DB/Library C.

Registration System - Financial Securities Association

Financial securities regulators needed a better way manage dealer registrations. To meet this need, they approved the development of a Web-based system for regulators to perform on-line tracking and approve/disapproval of registrations. The system also provides a database of disciplinary actions that regulators refer to in making their determinations. With on-line access to the records of each firm and individual working in securities industry, regulators use the system to review, grant or revoke privileges to buy or sell securities in their jurisdiction, and to collect registration fees and fees for renewals.

This high-visibility project required senior technical expertise to support the design and development of the core Oracle database repository. Tecnosoft staff was brought on board to provide such expertise along with leadership to support the firm's data administration and development activities. Specific activities were:

• Assisted in the review of project specifications, data analyses and plans
• Developed organization plans relative to data management needs and direction
• Modeled the entire system, and designed, developed and implemented the databases
• Performed source code control and software configuration management
• Created and maintained databases for prototyping, load testing and acceptance testing
• Served as liaison with the database system vendor, Oracle Corporation.

Data Warehouse - Major Capital Investment Company

The data warehouse was perhaps the single most important IT asset for this customer. However, even their extensive IT staff could not keep up with the ever-increasing workload. Tecnosoft was called upon to help them satisfy several key requests for application processing and reporting enhancements.

Several of Tecnosoft's projects focused on retrieving data from Sybase IQ, building report data, and writing the data to a SQL server. To this end, middleware was constructed as a set of C++ programs using a well-structured hierarchy of C++ classes and the TransObj module for data access. Specific tasks were directed to the design and implementation of data extraction, transformation and load (ETL) programs for multiple application/reporting modules. Tecnosoft also performed enhancement and maintenance of those modules.

A key element of these tasks was the use of object-oriented programming techniques to develop core reporting objects. These objects were then to build a multi-level hierarchy of classes to address different reporting requirements. The class library was based on a robust template using a suite of lists and iterators to dynamically handle diverse result sets.