[AccessD] Another software disaster...

While it is certainly possible they are running off old mainframes, it isn't unusual for stock exchanges to be modernised. Contractors and companies in this space get paid ludicrous amounts of money to upgrade systems to handle ever increasing loads and micro transactions to handle high frequency trading done automatically by computers.

The London Stock Exchange had to scrap a botched and unstable £40 million upgrade of their systems based on C#, .NET and SQL server by Microsoft and Accenture. They've now successfully replaced it with SUSE Linux and are trading faster than anyone else at the moment.

http://mobile.computerworlduk.com/news/open-source/3260727/london-stock-exchange-in-historic-linux-go-live/

So, it's very possible that it's not running on such old technology, but rather new technology. But, as we all know, all new technology brings the possibility of problems, bugs and glitches.

- Hans

Sent from my iPhone

On 2012-05-21, at 1:22 PM, "Jim Lawrence" <accessd at shaw.ca> wrote:

> Hi Mark:
> 
> The failure might have even been more rudimentary than that.
> 
> IIS has made impressive performance gains in the last little while and it
> now matches that of Apache. Both these packages are procedural based, in
> that they queue request, in memory. In addition, they only run on one
> computer, at a time (one port per computer), when memory capacity is reached
> they fail though they can disk swap, to the limits of the OS and hardware on
> which they are running. 
> 
> A recent network managing package is now been used which by design surpasses
> performance of both IIS and Apache. I am not an expert or even have basic
> knowledge on the new product so I am just quoting from what I have read. I
> became aware of it when its apparent adoption level surpassed that of IIS.
> It is called Ingenix (pronounced EngineX)   
> 
> It runs quite differently that Apache or IIS, in that it is event driven. In
> a test I read up on it, it could manage 60K hits per second to Apache's and
> IIS's respectable 25K per second, using the same equipment. In addition,
> when capacity has been reached it can delegate part of it responsibilities
> to another computers resources; in other words it has full distributive
> capabilities and potentially has unlimited scalability.
> 
> Exciting stuff for sure. Note: IngenX is free for download.
> 
> Jim
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
> [mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Mark Simms
> Sent: Monday, May 21, 2012 10:03 AM
> To: 'Access Developers discussion and problem solving'
> Subject: Re: [AccessD] Another software disaster...
> 
> Jim - that's very unlikely. This was a new system to handle new IPO's
> specifically.
> Likely written in Java or C due to the speed requirement.
> I'm guessing some idiot hard-coded that 5 millisecond interval...when in
> fact, it needed to be adjusted based on queue length or volume....or a
> combination. This theory would explain why traders didn't get confirmations
> for HOURS after being executed. Actually, this just on CNBC: they STILL
> HAVEN"T settled all of the trades as of today.
> 
> 
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