StreamBase 2.0 Targets Financials

StreamBase on Monday will unveil a version of its real-time stream processing engine thats focused on financial services and which will be able to snatch live data streams and record them back.

That playback ability in StreamBase 2.0 will let users model market assumptions and trading strategies on archived market data at market or accelerated speeds.

StreamBase 2.0, an update of software that can manage as many as 100,000 messages a second and provides a graphical interface for building applications, also comes with financial application templates and analytics, Java plug-ins for real-time applications, and interfaces to Microsoft Corp.s Excel or auto-generated Java GUI.

StreamBase Systems Inc. CEO Barry Morris said that the rationale behind stream processing is that theres a flood of data coming from sensor networks such as RFID (radio frequency identification) technology, and relational databases just dont have the capacity to deal with it.

"In the not too distant future, everything of material significance will have a real-time sensor connected to it," he said. "Thats a lot of real-time data that has to be handled by infrastructure. Relational technology wont have that kind of capacity. Hence our belief that theres a category called stream processing engines that will emerge."

Financial services are at the forefront of this trend, Morris said, with energy in that sector going to build applications for equity trading, options trading, bonds pricing and other types of fast-moving, data-intensive analytics—pretty much anything that happens on the trading floor.

/zimages/6/28571.gifClick here to read an interview with database legend Mike Stonebraker, creator of Ingres and Postgres and founder of Informix and, most recently, StreamBase.

As a consequence, although the capabilities in StreamBase 2.0 are generally applicable across verticals, including telecommunications, for example, theyre tuned in particular to financial services.

The updates reusable and extendable application components are designed so that customers can easily embed Java or C++ analytics within real-time streaming applications.

This will enable customers to leverage their libraries of existing code, using a "firewalled" or safe development area for application testing and debugging. Also, new "Super Boxes" will enable users to create reusable libraries of StreamBase application components.

"People in financial services may have a secret-sauce model and want to reuse it," said Bill Hobbib, StreamBases vice president of marketing.

"Not to just cut and paste it but to reference it or provide it to a bigger solution a systems integrator may be using."

Next Page: A trend toward component reuse.