Skip the navigation

Wall Street Releases Draft XML Standard

Brokerage group invites public comment

By Maria Trombly
April 2, 2001 12:00 PM ET

Computerworld - The RIXML.org Ltd. standards committee, a consortium of brokerage firms that's committed to creating a standard computer language for presenting investment and financial research, last week released a draft version of Research Information Exchange Markup Language (RIXML) 1.0 for public comment.
The need for a standard approach to investment reports is critical on Wall Street because brokerages produce some 2,000 notes and reports daily, said sell-side co-chairman Christopher Betz, vice president for the institutional equity division at New York-based Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co.
"One new piece of content comes out of Wall Street every six seconds," Betz said. "If you're a portfolio manager or analyst trying to make investment decisions, you have piles of content you have to go through."
That's a big problem, not only for buy-side firms but also for sell-side firms, which generate the bulk of these reports, said Ariana Moore, an analyst at Cambridge, Mass.-based Celent Communications LLC.
Comprehensive Information
The new voluntary, open standard is designed to let the authors of these reports tag the content with four major types of information, Betz said. This includes source information such as publisher, analyst and research team; content information that describes whether the content is a Web address, an HTML file or an Adobe Acrobat file; legal material such as disclosures, disclaimers, trademarks and copyrights; and context information that describes what the report is about - a country, an industry or a specific sector such as semiconductors.
The current standard doesn't allow for much tagging of the content itself, Betz said, but that will be possible in later versions.
Another future priority is to open up the standard to other types of asset classes, according to buy-side co-chairwoman Ellen Callahan, director of equity market data at Boston-based Fidelity Investments. These classes include credit research, debt instruments, commodities, foreign exchange and derivatives reports, she said.
Callahan said the RIXML standards committee plans to begin working on these new features with Version 2.0 after the initial release is introduced early next month.
At present, there are already some global capabilities built into the standard, according to buy-side co-chairman Chuck Pickelhaupt, director of internal Web portal development at Fidelity.
For instance, "you can describe the content in any language you choose, and the underlying document can be in multiple languages," he said.
In later versions, the standard may be extended to handle most currencies and other global issues, Callahan added.
The 30-day comment period for RIXML 1.0 ends April 25.

Read more about App Development in Computerworld's App Development Topic Center.



Additional Resources
Forrester Consulting - Optimizing Users and Applications in a Mobile World
WHITE PAPER
Solving application issues over the WAN requires careful consideration. Based on their independent research, Forrester Consulting offers recommendations on how to tackle application performance issues, insufficient bandwidth and the inability to quickly restore users in a disaster.

Read now.

Security KnowledgeVault
WHITE PAPER
Security is not an option. This KnowledgeVault Series offers professional advice how to be proactive in the fight against cybercrimes and multi-layered security threats; how to adopt a holistic approach to protecting and managing data; and how to hire a qualified security assessor. Make security your Number 1 priority.

Read now.

Cut Communications Costs Once and for All
WHITE PAPER
New IP-based communications systems are being deployed by small and midsized businesses at a rapid rate. Learn how these organizations are enabling faster responsiveness, creating better customer experiences, speeding office or mobile interactions, and dramatically reducing existing communications costs.

Read now.

App Development White Papers
The Keys to Distributed & Agile Application Development
How leading firms are winning with strategies for efficient application development, without relying on co-location.
Overcome Top 7 Admin Challenges of Active Directory
As Active Directory's role in the enterprise has drastically increased, so has the need to secure the data. Gain insight on creating repeatable,...
Insiders Can Ruin Your Company. Take Action.
Did you know that 80 percent of threats to an organization come from the inside? The threat from insiders is often overlooked in...
Top Solutions and Tools to Prevent Devastating Malware
Custom malware frequently goes undetected. According to Forrester Research, the best way to reduce risk of breach is to deploy file integrity monitoring...
Streamline Compliance and Increase ROI
Streamline, simplify, and automate compliance related activities; especially those that impact multiple business units. This white paper from NetIQ, outlines solutions that will...
All App Development White Papers
App Development Webcasts
Reduced TCO for Communications Applications with New Oracle SPARC Servers
In this webcast learn how Oracle's new SPARC T4 servers and SPARC Supercluster deliver the security, performance, and scalability required for 4G network...
Optimizing Networks for the Cloud
Join guest speaker, Rohit Mehra, IDC Director of Enterprise Communications Infrastructure, to explore current trends, discuss best practices for optimizing Data Center and...
Apps QuickStart Series Part 2: Designing and Deploying SQL Server on VMware vSphere
Download this webcast to learn about the design considerations for virtualizing SQL workloads, performance and scalability information and high-availability options, as well as...
Apps QuickStart Series Part 1: Designing and Deploying Exchange 2010 on VMware vSphere
Download this webcast to learn the virtual hardware design considerations for Exchange 2010, deployment using the building block approach, options for high-availability and...
Customer Spotlight: How IPC The Hospitalist Company Implemented Oracle on VMware
Have you been looking to hear about customer's experiences with the new VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager product? View this webcast to learn...
All App Development Webcasts
Newsletter Sign-Up

Receive the latest news test, reviews and trends on your favorite technology topics

Choose a newsletter
  1. View all newsletters | Privacy Policy
IT Jobs