PUBLIC COMMENT PERIOD – Orchestra Version 1.1 RC1

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This proposal from the FIX Orchestra Subcommittee provides the details of the Orchestra Technical Standard Version 1.1 Release Candidate 1.

Orchestra was conceived as machine readable rules of engagement between counterparties. As such, it is a standard for exchange of metadata about the data elements and behaviour of electronic interfaces (FIX and non-FIX). Orchestra cuts time to on-board counterparties and improves accuracy of implementations. It can also be used to capture interface documentation and generate Rules of Engagement documents for clients.

The documents for the first release candidate of Orchestra Version 1.1 can be found as follows:

Previous documents related to the Orchestra Standard can be found here.

These are the most important enhancements that Orchestra V1.1 RC1 provides compared to Orchestra V1.0:

  • The field attribute “type” no longer applies to fields with code sets and is only to be used for actual datatypes. A new field attribute “codeSet” applies to fields supporting code sets. The field attributes “type” and “codeSet” are mutually exclusive.
  • Scenarios are declared as top-level elements and uniquely identified by a numerical ID. The scenario name is no longer used as a reference key but may be used to supplement the ID.
  • Message definitions may contain a new element “when” to identify the scenario applicable to an incoming message based on its fields and values.
  • Datatypes may have scenarios
  • References to groups, components, and fields may contain the name in addition to the identifier
  • Fields can be explicitly linked to fields containing their encoded versions
  • Annotations are supported for top-level elements
  • Mapped datatypes have a new attribute “size” for fixed-length encodings
  • Code sets support the union datatype (also retained as a field attribute)

The proposal is following the technical standards review process described in the document found here. The Orchestra Subcommittee continues to work on the second release candidate. There are already a number of issues that have been documented in the GitHub presence of the FIX Trading Community:

  • Orchestra Schema issues can be found here
  • Orchestra Technical Specification issues can be found here

Please send an email to fix@fixtrading.org if you are interested in contributing to the work.

This release candidate now enters a public comment period in which public review and feedback is encouraged. The public comment period will run for a period of 90 days ending on February 16, 2024.

Please post feedback, comments, and questions as replies to this discussion thread.