StreamBase's Component Exchange Encourages Community Development

StreamBase Systems is introducing a community development approach to complex event processing (CEP) with the launch of its StreamBase Component Exchange (SBX), which will allow developers to download and share reusable components in order to create complete applications. The company hopes to "spark innovation" with its initiative, which it says has been driven by customer demand. The move is another illustration of how financial markets firms are embracing collaborative and open source approaches as they seek to reduce development costs and speed time to market.

“The StreamBase Component Exchange will push the CEP market to the next level by providing a global, open library of technical innovation, where ideas can be exchanged freely," says Richard Tibbetts, CTO of StreamBase.

SBX components can be downloaded from the sbx.streambase.com web site and from within the StreamBase version 6.5 Studio development environment. All of the components in SBX are made available free of charge and without warranty under the BSD License, which allows for the creation of proprietary applications and products that are licensed under their own terms.

Components are subject to basic certification and are provided in source code and include a video tutorial. Examples of components available at launch include: - Adapters. Which connect to CEP engine to in-bound and out-bound event streams. For example, the Twitter adapter allows StreamBase to consume and produce Twitter “tweet” streams. - Integrations.

Connect to components written in alternative technologies. For example, the Calling Python from StreamBase component allows for the integration of the Python programming language with StreamBase. - Utilities. Operators or functions that extend the CEP platform.

For example, the Delay Operator component defers processing an event into the future. - Domain-specific algorithms. Implement common industry-specific techniques. For example, the Options Pricing using Monte Carlo component supports put and call options. Binomial pricing and Bollinger Band components are also available.

StreamBase officials suggest the the "opportunity is ripe" for introducing a collaborative approach to financial markets software development, citing open source initiatives, such as the AMQP messaging and QuickFIX projects. Other initiatives include SunGard's Common Services Architecture and projects headed by the Collaborative Software Initiative, including its Open Market Data feed handlers.

While firms operating in the financial markets are notoriously secretive when it comes to the "secret sauce" that power applications like algorithmic and high frequency trading, they are beginning to embrace collaborative approaches for platform code - into which CEP fits for some.

Reduced development time and reduced costs, and higher software quality are cited as the benefits of community approaches - which might be restricted to internal teams or industry organisations.