Internet Spread Betting
Scenario
Development of Internet interface to spread betting application.
Situation
This objective of this assignment was to open an Internet distribution
channel for the company's interactive spread betting products,
thus allowing registered customers to place a bet via
the Internet, priced in real time by one of the company's
dealing staff. The site also provided live market price
and news feeds to the customers, and was packaged in a
flexible multi-window dealing console that could be configured
by the customer. Interfaces were also required to the
company's internal deal transaction and accounting system
that runs in a legacy database environment. The project
timescale was very short due to the need to synchronise
the software release with the company's own flotation.
Charteris Role
Charteris' associate company provided a senior
development consultant resource, who also undertook mentoring
as required for the client development team.
Solution
Due to the short timescales, it was decided to implement the
interactive dealing functionality by porting existing
Visual Basic remote dealing client software to ActiveX
controls hosted in ASP pages.
All server-side components were written in Visual Basic, while
those called from ASP pages run under MTS and use a SQL
Server 7 data store. Real-time data feeds were pipelined
using MSMQ or were picked up from a UDP broadcast across the internal
network. A separate VB application pumped live prices
as UDP to those clients whose firewall/proxy configurations
allow their receipt.
The system was implemented successfully in time for the company
flotation, and was a key demonstration component of the
launch.