Author Archives: Ben

The next time I implement a time-sheeting system

Posted on July 22, 2014 by Ben

I will not punish my consultants for being billable on client site by requiring them to log into a VPN, use IE6, use ActiveX downloads, or place other cruel and unusual barriers to them billing time. I will not make … Continue reading →

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You are not doing Scrum

Posted on May 20, 2014 by Ben

Because your stand-up is a 45 minute conference call to India. Because you still have to estimate total effort and duration. Because the customer does not attend reviews or planning meetings. Because you are not showing working software at the … Continue reading →

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Decision Table Rules Part 1 – The Exclusivity Problem

Posted on January 2, 2014 by Ben

Summary How the use of decision tables for modelling business rules gives rise to questions about whether rules are mutually exclusive. Background We have recently been using a form of decision table to classify a population of messages. We have … Continue reading →

Posted in Models, Routing Rules, Rule Engines | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

ISDA FpML Training Course – Notes

Posted on November 29, 2013 by Ben

A member of the team attended one of ISDA’s London training session on FpML (the basic FpML Training Course, 26-Nov-2013).   The good? + Rather natty FpML 5 User Guide + Authoritative talk on interest rate derivatives from Harry McAllister … Continue reading →

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The Tyrant System

Posted on April 9, 2013 by Ben

It’s time to name something in the enterprise integration landscape: the tyrant system. The tyrant system is where your project dreams go to die. The tyrant system does not answer to anyone. The tyrant system has releases once in a … Continue reading →

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10 Questions To Ask About An API

Posted on August 6, 2012 by Ben

The presence of an API in the systems we were buying or building used to be a nice feature to have. It would be appreciated by those trying to write management reports, but it would not be foremost in the … Continue reading →

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10 Things You’ll Do On Every Messaging Project – Designing an Adapter Framework

Posted on May 13, 2012 by Ben

This is the second in our series on life on an enteprise messaging project. This time we will be discussing that adapter framework you noticed appearing in the development team’s conversations. There’s no line for it on the project plan, … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Business Rules, Data Mapping, Domain Model, Enterprise Integration, Message Queue Software, Messaging | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Ten Things You’ll Do On Every Messaging Project – Intro

Posted on March 30, 2012 by Ben

So you’ve read Enterprise Patterns, and understood at least half of it. You’ve either finally got Eclipse working, or downloaded last week’s service pack for Visual Studio. You’re ready to write your first enterprise messaging solution – but what’s it … Continue reading →

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AWS for Financial Services London – Using Big Data Analytic to Drive New Revenue

Posted on March 21, 2012 by Ben

Amazon are running a morning conference in the City next week (29 March 2012). We’ll be going along to find out more!

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10 Things You Never Wanted To Know About The Eurex 13 Clearing Feed

Posted on March 2, 2012 by Ben

Here’s a handy list of quirks and gotchas you won’t find in the documentation for the Eurex 13 trade confirmation stream (): (1) When a trade is posted on a G1/G2 account (automated give-up), the trade confirmation message (000) will … Continue reading →

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