Industry news & insights.

As a special Thanksgiving treat, this week we want to share a mini-series with you all about 'getting specs right'. Everything we're doing in our #dofixdifferently series is all about trying to make your firm more automated, smarter and get customers onboard faster. With documentation being such a key part of this, #dospecsdifferently delves into how to make specs infinitely more usable and authoritative.

We have FIX 4.2, FIX 4.4, Service Packs, and Extension Packs, but what is FIX Latest? FIX Latest breaks up the different parts of the FIX protocol into; Encoding, Session, and Application layer. FIX Latest is essentially a big pot of messages, fields, and enumerations enabling firms to pick and choose depending on the requirements of their API.

In this week's episode of #doFIXdifferently, Chris Lees takes a look at the different layers that make up FIX, peeling the FIX onion to highlight some of the component blocks that you might not be aware of.

In this week's episode, Chris Lees discusses why people hack together tools inside firms. We look at the pros and cons of developing internal tools to solve specific problems within firms. What are the benefits? and what are the drawbacks?

Chris Lees talks to Gregg Drumma, founder of Boston-based software vendor Gamma Three Trading. In addition to talking all things FIX, Gregg talks more about their FIX Protocol testing tool, FIX Sim, which provides an easy to use FIX simulation environment for testing of trading workflows.

In this week's episode, Chris Lees discusses why people hack together tools inside firms. We look at the pros and cons of developing internal tools to solve specific problems within firms. What are the benefits? and what are the drawbacks?

Chris Lees takes an honest look at FIX specifications, how firms are currently using them, and a vision for the future where machine-readable “contracts” unlock automation and efficiency across FIX connectivity, FIX conformance, and customer support.

Chris Lees discusses FIX Orchestra, an XML standard document from the FIX Trading Community, designed to express a FIX specification document in a machine-readable format. With an end goal to build up a machine-readable eco-system, FIX Orchestra is designed to reduce the time it takes to onboard counterparties, and improve the overall accuracy of FIX connectivity.

This week, joining Chris Lees as he takes a look at the FIX landscape, which elements are solved, and which have room for improvement. We cover FIX engines, the challenges of FIX migration, FIX standards, FIX certification, Testing and QA, FIX log parsing, automation, and the importance of machine-readable FIX specifications.

Chris Lees explores doing FIX differently, discussing the systems, tools, and processes that surround FIX, which can help FIX onboarding, and production support to be more efficient. In the #doFIXdifferently series, we will dive into key themes such as automation, and how to be more efficient, and smarter with the resources available.