Javelin Releases Coppelia Version To Support FIX 4.2

Javelin has released the latest version of Coppelia, its FIX protocol messaging server, upgraded to FIX 4.2.

Javelin Technologies President George Kledaras explains the new version of Coppelia will allow the vendor's clients in the global securities marketplace to expand their services and capabilities, thanks to FIX 4.2's innovative design. In addition, he says, it is the first commercially available FIX 4.2 solution. Using FIX 4.2, firms will be able to increase their functionality for mass quoting, options and futures trading, book messages or market feed messages, list trading, ECNs and exchanges, as well as Japanese language and business processes.

Over the last few months, Javelin has been working to implement the FIX 4.2 specs into its existing Coppelia server/software. Coppelia is programmed in Java, and it utilizes a single-process/multi-thread design to maintain scalability. As with older versions, Coppelia will continue to work with a variety of different platform options, such as Windows NT and Sun Solaris. In addition, the server will be able to understand and communicate with older versions of FIX.

Though FIX version 4.2 was released in March, it has remained virtually untouched by many firms within the securities industry. Kledaras says he finds firms' sluggishness to upgrade from their old FIX engines unsurprising.

"Many of these companies think, 'Hey, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.' Well, our philosophy is if it ain't broke, break it," he says. "Our idea is that, as soon as people find out that there's a real need to move and there's functionality that they're missing that can give them a competitive advantage, then they're going to move to it."

To integrate the protocol, a firm must install a software upgrade provided by Javelin over their existing Coppelia FIX server. However, Kledaras says, while Coppelia comes ready to handle all the features of FIX 4.2, the firm may need to make several coding changes or install software tools to facilitate such features as book messages or list trading.

Coppelia owes its increased functionality to what Kledaras calls FIX 4.2's "open-ended" nature. More explicitly, this version of the protocol does not impose limits on the size of the FIX messages a firm can handle, and it allows trading systems and back offices to process more data messages at once. Thus, as demand for greater trading capabilities increases and as more market data is in-transit, FIX 4.2 will continue to handle the workload. In that way, the reasons to upgrade from FIX 4.0 or FIX 4.1 to version 4.2 are compelling, especially to a firm that wants to increase its value-added services to customers and handle the challenges of T+1 and decreased time to market.

"There was no real reason to move from FIX 4.0 to FIX 4.1," Kledaras says. "Even though FIX 4.1 was a step forward, there was nothing really compelling in it to get people to move. The compelling thing to get people to move from FIX 3.0 to 4.0 was Y2K. Another compelling reason to upgrade was that sequence numbers were expanded-you could send a lot more messages during one day.

"All the changes here weren't done in a vacuum. They were all done by clients and the industry coming together to say, 'Hey, we really need this to go forward,'" he says. "It's almost breaking down the functionality. It hits so many different areas that it's almost going to affect everyone. It wasn't like FIX 4.1, where there were some additions into international trading. Well, not too many people do international trading with FIX yet. So, it didn't really affect people."

One important feature of FIX 4.2 is its support for FIXML, through document type definitions (DTD's). Kledaras says he believes an industry-wide upgrade to FIX 4.2 will help facilitate the inevitable move to the XML space. In addition, he says, the open architecture will surely affect many within the industry. Whereas in the past, FIX could handle messages no longer than 10,000 characters long, the version will support messages of infinite length. Fund managers, for example, will be able to distribute shares of a stock among hundred of funds or perform account allocations without overloading the system. Another handy feature of FIX 4.2 is its expanded functionality for options and futures trading, which allows traders to deal with multi-leg options and define products on the fly.