Industry news & insights.

FIX Protocol has undoubtedly been a success story in the industry. When it was launched it was well ahead of its time but as the protocol matures, progress has understandably slowed. At a time when the wider API ecosystem is booming, Chris Lees asks whether the FIX Protocol can remain relevant for the long term.

Many firms that we speak to secretly struggle with FIX connectivity. Much like a duck moving across water, the internal reality of FIX connectivity is often quite different, which is why I suggest that firms secretly struggle with connectivity. For almost a decade, we’ve been talking to firms about what works and what doesn’t, and we’ve distilled these down into five principles for successful FIX connectivity.

Here at FixSpec we think of API documentation as a "contract" between two parties. It describes available messages, fields, and enumerations and workflows. It tells readers that if they send X in, they can expect Y in return. Customer-specific specs take this a step further by removing anything that a specific customer doesn't use, and extends the documentation to capture bespoke customisations and transformations. This has a number of benefits to both the sender and receiver.

In this week's #doFIXdifferently, we take a look at how firms currently use log files, and how they can be a gold mine of information about your API and your customers. Today logs are everywhere and easily accessible, and if you have a question about how your API is behaving, then logs are often the first port of call. Some firms are using tools like Elastic Search of Splunk to manage and understand logs. But what do you actually do with them?

Chris Lees explores what a more automated vision of a FIX pipeline might look like. A rapidly-emerging trend in software deployment is the idea of continuous integration and deployment. Done correctly, it can dramatically accelerate your software lifecycle without compromising testing. In this episode, Chris walks through how continual integration/deployment might apply to the #FIXProtocol world. And identify machine-readable documentation as THE critical lynchpin to making it work.

In this week's #90secondFIX, Chris Lees explores how to get the most out of PDF and XML FIX documentation. Where having accurate PDF and XML documentation is good, how can we take it a step further and make it easier to manage internally, and easier to understand for your customers.

In today's #90secondFIX, Chris Lees answers the question of why the FIX protocol has so much variability to it. The FIX protocol itself is flexible by design. Trading venues, investment banks, they all compete based on functionality, and therefore the protocol needs enough consistency to allow people to understand what is being articulated,

FIX Algorithmic Trading Definition Language, better known as FIXatdl, is a standard for the exchange of meta-information developed in the mid-2000s to address the problems around algorithmic trading definition. An algo is driven by a series of parameters that the bank needs its customers to send in. How do you define these things? How do you convey exactly what the parameters are? What the valid values are? How should they be laid out on a particular UI section, for example?

In this mini-series as part of #doFIXdifferently​, Chris Lees introduces FIX log parsers; what they are, how they can help you and your team, and takes a look at some examples of parsers currently available.

How can you improve your FIX conformance testing? Chris Lees shares his 10 top tips. Organize your conformance test really clearly. Make sure they're in well-defined sections that are easy to remove. Tie them to customer capabilities as you go through things with your customer. You'll understand what they're capable of; track those things as you go...