SW Development Case Study
DEVELOPING A CUSTOM TRADING APPLICATION IN NEXTSTEP:
The afs:TRADE Trading Management System is a custom application designed for the First National Bank of Chicago to manage its commercial paper trading and underwriting operations. The system provides on-line, real time access to all of the information needed by traders and salespeople as they make decisions throughout the trading day. As the sole data entry point for all securities transactions, it streamlines the flow of information between the front and back offices by printing a copy of each ticket and transmitting trade information to the mainframe accounting system.
The afs:TRADE system runs in a client/server environment, with a Sun Sparc 2 database server and NeXT workstation clients. The front end application was designed and implemented with native NEXTSTEP tools in Objective C. Printing and communication daemons were written in ANSI C, because they run on both Sun and NeXT hardware. The application has been running in production since April 1992, and was recently upgraded to handle additional investment types. In addition, AFS has implemented distinct versions of the system for three new customers over the past year. High code reuse through subclassing and minimal maintenance requirements in those projects have proved the value of an object-oriented approach in custom applications.
AFScasestudy
Written by Gregory H. Anderson, President
Anderson Financial Systems Inc.