Hi Everyone,
I have recently joined a new company who is setting up electronic trading desk from scratch so this involves connecting to all UK and Europe brokers / Venue’s one thing i have not dealt with before is Repeating Groups for example:
453 NoPartyIDs
448* PartyID
447* PartyIDSource
452* PartyRole
I am slightly confused as we are using FIX Version 4.2 but I am seeing this is a 4.4 concept everywhere can someone clarify this for me please.
Is there a place i go to for understanding how to set this up for 4.2 if it can be used as its become a required mandatory field for many venues and brokers!
Thanks
Welcome to the FIX Trading Community Jack!
You are right - as originally intended the idea was indeed that FIX.4.2 would not support repeating groups and that you would indicate support for repeating groups and other changes by switching to FIX.4.4 (or later).
However, in practice what the industry has done is to simply adopt features from later standards into their existing systems, and not re-standardise at FIX.4.4 or later.
The effect is that the BeginString is now more of a guideline as to the minimum expectation of support than strictly outlining the usage.
Our community, which is driven by industry has recognised this and hence the ‘FIX Latest’ and Orchestra work. FIX Latest is more of a living spec which covers the current fields and values. Orchestra is a machine-readable configuration which attempts to ensure both side are communicating using the same implementation.
In practice what you can do is look at the FIX.4.4 implementation and adopt the necessary elements. You may need to modify your FIX engine (e.g. updating the DataDictionary) to support it of course.
You should also engage with your counter-parties to ensure there are no other issues. They may/should have FIX specs you can use to assist with this. It is highly likely the approach will vary. (Of course you may find it more practical to instead work with a vendor who has solved this integration problem).
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