Do parties really use Raw FIX for business?

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Imported from previous forum

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[ original email was from Darshan Khedekar - darshan.khedekar.ext@deutsche-boerse.com ]
Hello,

Considering the verbose structure of FIX I am interested in knowing whether parites use raw FIX messages. Nowdays with exploding exchange volumes I suppose that pure string type data will choke the tranmission lines and thsu soem form of public or private compression algos need to be applied before the data lands on the lines.

Futher I am interested in knowing the following:

  • Do parties use FAST for compressing the FIX data?
  • Do parties use other general compression alogs such as LZ?
  • Some other proprietory data compression techniques.

Any input will be helpful.

Thanks,
Darshan

3

Darshan,

There are several exchanges that rely on FIX tag=value (traditional FIX) as their primary interfaces. The majority of these markets have found that the FIX protocol meets their requirements.

The FAST Protocol was developed by FPL to provide both an industry best practice for market data compression as well as to provide a very efficient wire format for FIX traffic. The FIX Market Data Optimization Working Group, led by Rich Shriver and Rolf Andersson, is completing a guide for implementing FIX over the FAST Protocol which can serve as a starting point for those markets that want both an open industry standard protocol, yet require extreme performance.

Hope this helps.

Hello,

Considering the verbose structure of FIX I am interested in knowing
whether parites use raw FIX messages. Nowdays with exploding exchange
volumes I suppose that pure string type data will choke the tranmission
lines and thsu soem form of public or private compression algos need to
be applied before the data lands on the lines.

Futher I am interested in knowing the following:

  • Do parties use FAST for compressing the FIX data?
  • Do parties use other general compression alogs such as LZ?
  • Some other proprietory data compression techniques.

Any input will be helpful.

Thanks, Darshan

4

FAST is becoming the standard compression for FIX, and the trend seem to go quickly towards this. While there are many other options than FAST for compression our (rather quick) evaluation before we went with the FAST option showed FAST generally used less cpu and had a higher compression rate than generic compression techniques. Bundled with the “industry standard” slogan, the choice was easy for us.

FAST has not been around for that long, but the willingness to use it seem high. Today many uses ASCII FIX, but I think this will quickly change, only question as I see it is what level of FAST will become standard (will for example dynamic templates be commonly used? (I hope so)).

Regards,
Erik Scholander

Hello,

Considering the verbose structure of FIX I am interested in knowing
whether parites use raw FIX messages. Nowdays with exploding exchange
volumes I suppose that pure string type data will choke the tranmission
lines and thsu soem form of public or private compression algos need to
be applied before the data lands on the lines.

Futher I am interested in knowing the following:

  • Do parties use FAST for compressing the FIX data?
  • Do parties use other general compression alogs such as LZ?
  • Some other proprietory data compression techniques.

Any input will be helpful.

Thanks, Darshan