FIX Unites Market Data, High-Performance Working Groups

MDOWG will be subsumed under HPWG, whose constituent subcommittees—including the Application Layer Market Data Subgroup and the FIX Adapted for Streaming (FAST) Subgroup—oversee the use of FIX as a high-performance trading protocol. The new HPWG will report directly into the FIX Global Technical Committee.

Until recently, MDOWG had been finalizing the specifications for a new FIX Protocol-based market data standard to replace FAST, which was sidelined after IXO/Realtime Data filed a lawsuit against exchanges, banks and vendors, claiming an existing patent for FAST’s data compression technology. Meanwhile, HPWG was developing the next generation of the FIX Protocol optimized for high-performance trading, the objective of which is to offer an open standard “that can replace today’s proprietary interfaces for high-performance trading and market data.”

‘Necessary Coordination’
“The consolidation of the MDOWG into the HPWG is a logical step to get the necessary coordination and focus of our continued development efforts,” says Rolf Andersson, chief executive of Swedish software company Pantor Engineering—which helped develop the FIX standard for trade communication, and which co-developed FAST with FIX and Chicago-based feed handler and ticker plant vendor SpryWare—in a statement.