Straight Through Processing (STP) describes an IT drive within the Financial Services industry to remove the need to batch up data between separate islands of processing (application islands).

Instead, STP aims to process each record or transaction in real-time as soon as it arrives, immediately generating an output record and thus allowing the records to flow straight through – hence the name STP.

Maintaining Correctness

SQLstream's RAMMS ensures that logical correctness is preserved for all of the Straight Through Processing, carefully orchestrateing the collection, filtering, aggregation and transformation of the data at each step.

The SQLstream solution allows relevant data with no dependencies to flow straight through immediately. When business or application purposes require that certain data be merged, joined, grouped or aggregated with other data, answers can only be forwarded when all necessary data have arrived. In such cases, the SQLstream solution delays processing until all inputs become available, and then creates and forwards results immediately.

SQLstream's relational messaging paradigm significantly reduces processing orchestration complexity, while making it easy to add new views whenever needed, such as for reconciliation error or compliance checking.

Shrinking Latency

Conventional Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) has helped the Financial Services industry shrink latency for processing records end-to-end, largely through a series of industry-wide latency goals. “T+3” (three days' latency in processing such as settlement) has more recently become “T+1.”

The ultimate goal is real-time: “T+0.” SQLstream's breakthrough Relational Asynchronous Messaging MOM makes the goal of T+0 much more tractable.

The key driver of this streamlining process is cost reduction, particularly the cost of tying up billions of dollars for multiple days. Until complete end-to-end processing has been completed for a transaction, brokers and other institutions are unable to recognize the revenue derived from that transaction.

Beyond capital immobilization, there is significant financial exposure if any transaction components are lost, such as the sale. Given the large amounts of money involved in processing stock transactions, the exposure and tie-up costs are huge.

SQLstream Solutions: the RAM Approach

SQLstream's simple and elegant way of declaratively expressing both the processing logic and the dependencies across transactions allows results to flow as soon as they can be logically evaluated. Processing logic includes all activities required between the input of a stage and the output of that stage. As an example of such dependencies, it can occur that three stock sale transactions must be aggregated together to match the original customer order for the stock sale.

For the Financial Services Industry, declarative expression of both processing logic and dependencies translates into potential savings of billions of dollars. These savings derive from each of the following benefits, and their interactions:

• Reducing the tie-up time, even through lost interest alone

• Timely information

• Competitive advantage for early adopters

• Risk reduction, plus associated insurance protection costs

• Maintenance and management of RAM-based STP systems when compared to existing middleware or custom application program code.

The SQLstream solution provides a previously-unavailable level of clarity, transparency, and responsiveness. Swiftly meeting needs arising from changes in business rules or regulations, marketing opportunities, or competitive circumstances can easily be worth billions of dollar in profits, losses, or penalties.