• Order execution / order book management application that interfaces to various exchanges.
• Internet banking and share trading applications that provide account and statement query, OFX statement download, bill-pay etc.
• Branch teller applications that manipulate customer contact and account information.

These applications are typically based on a client/server model where the client application communicates with the server through the exchange of a message sequence.
More recently, industry standard protocols that define the client/server messaging in the above financial services applications have evolved. The Open Financial Exchange (OFX), the Interactive Financial Exchange (IFX) and Financial Information eXchange (FIX) protocols are examples of these. 
The more recent versions of these protocols are based on the industry standard eXtensible Markup Language (XML), providing a standards based, open architecture for inter-application communication for financial services applications. 

2.1 Application Development Challenges

Unfortunately, the interactions defined by the financial services protocols such as FIX, OFX and IFX include complex session management, authorisation and message flow scenarios, making it extremely difficult for a client application developer to implement such protocols.
Hence, financial services organisations have traditionally resorted to implementing customised or home grown, but simpler versions of these protocols to serve their specific needs. This results in closed systems that cannot be easily interfaced or integrated with partner organisations or other applications as business requirements dictate.

2.2 The Active-COM Solution

The Active-COM Financial Services Toolkit provides a set of tools and services that can be easily used to build client applications that adhere to industry standard protocols. 
The application development is simplified by removing the protocol specific complexities from the client application. The ACFST API encapsulates the session management and message flow complexities of the protocol. 
The client application developer is only required to implement the business functionality of the application. The client application uses the ACFST business-objects, which provide a high level API that encapsulates the underlying messaging protocol. The domain specific business objects include entities such as Customer, Account, Transaction and Order that the business applications can readily use. 
The business objects are provided as either COM or J2EE components, thus providing the customer the technology choice to use most appropriate technology for the organisation. 

3. ACFST ARCHITECTURE

The Active-COM Financial Services Toolkit is based on an n-tier architecture. The toolkit provides the plumbing and the standard business components that are required to integrate various client-side business applications with back-end services through Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) technology.



The Financial Services Gateway implements the standard messaging protocols such as OFX, IFX and FIX. The protocol specific business components provide a high level API that the client applications can use.
The server provides the integration capability with back-office services. These services may include customer relationship management (CRM) systems, product repositories such as saving, current accounts, investment management systems, and order execution systems, that interface to various trading exchanges.

3.1 Client/Server Communications

The Client/Server communications is carried out using industry standard transport protocols such as TCP/IP and HTTP. The messages are formatted as XML messages, thus allowing easy integration between multiple applications.

3.2 Service Integration

The FS Gateway can be integrated with any external system that implements the same industry standard protocols. Wherever the external application or service does not implement an industry standard protocol, integration is achieved through an integration adapter that translates the XML message to a service specific format.