MDX Broadens Data Distribution With MDXT Connect V4

“By adding broad internet-based data delivery, flexibility of our cache, and the ability to distribute to and capture data from web pages and mobile apps, we are positioning ourselves as a supplier of a distributed platform for clients to reach their end customers,” says MDX co-founder and chief technology officer Richard Gissing. “With version 3, we had the ability to support sharing of data between users within an organization over a local area network very effectively—for example, on or between desks. With version 4, we’ve moved to a broad data distribution platform that allows an organization to take data from a market data platform like TREP or from other systems and distribute that through our platform over the web.”

A key change in the new version is support for internet-based data distribution and capture, developed for a broker client that wanted to distribute its prices broadly to clients—and receive data back from those clients—over the internet, which required MDX to build new functionalities into the platform to address issues like security and bandwidth management. In addition, MDX had seen demand for clients to deploy MDXT Connect servers in cloud environments so that users within their organizations could also connect to the platform over the internet.

“The first thing we did was beef up the last-value cache to improve its performance, so it can support much larger numbers of clients via multi-threaded connections. We added bandwidth management so clients can limit via a web-based user interface the amount of bandwidth each customer takes up, and we added a very flexible permissioning module so clients can permission customers for datasets very easily, and also limit the number of subscriptions each customer can have—for example, the number of instruments they subscribe to,” Gissing says.

Related to this, the new version replicates data across all servers running MDXT Connect for added resiliency, and offers two types of secure, encrypted connection—a “military-grade” 256-bit proprietary encryption, and Transport Layer Security (TLS—the successor to Secure Sockets Layer), which Gissing says may be more familiar to users.

A new Capture module allows users to capture any data arriving in MDXT Connect’s cache and send that to a MongoDB database to create tick-by-tick historical records, whereas the in-memory last-value cache only stores the most recent version of a data item. Clients can set up the records or fields that they want to capture, and the frequency with which they want to capture them—for example, to create a mark-to-market curve or end-of-day curve—and can query the data using a web-based interface.

Version 4 also includes a Web Sockets Connector that allows clients to stream data from MDXT Connect into web pages and mobile apps, to make it easier to get data to end customers, and for clients’ own staff to access data and set up alerts while on the move.

“Previously, to interact with our platform, you would use our .Net or C++ APIs to publish and subscribe to the cache, and the front-end ‘subscriber’ tends to be a spreadsheet or a custom application. But we were seeing demand for the ability to put data on web pages and mobile devices,” Gissing says. “So we created this, which uses a Java library to connect to web pages. And in the second quarter of this year, we aim to develop a mobile app that can connect to our service and allow clients to set up their own apps.”

Another new module in version 4 is the TREP Connector, which enables users to connect MDX’s cache directly to TREP and use it in place of Thomson Reuters’ own Advanced Transformation Server, allowing applications built to publish/subscribe to TREP to also publish/subscribe directly to MDX’s cache.

“Our cache won’t replicate all the functions of ATS. But if all you want is a last-value cache, this is more cost-effective,” Gissing says. “The main thing was to make it easier for firms that are heavily invested in TREP infrastructure to explore other ways of distributing data. It means all their existing apps wouldn’t need to change for them to take advantage of our broader distribution.”