Silicon Valley Musings

I was the development manager for a product called MarketSheet for Windows (MSW) during the later part of the last century. Someone asked me the other day what I would do differently if I had to design a MarketSheet like product today.

Below is an outline that starts to identify what would shape the architecture of such a product I’ll call OpenSheet. The observations listed under “What’s happened since MSW?” are ordered from the most to least obvious (to me anyway). I’ve identify some of the ramifications of the last three observations.

MarketSheet for Windows (MSW)
? Real-time, market data, decision support application use by equity, forex, and bond traders
? ~300,000 lines of C++ code, nine engineers at peak
? Multi-document, ActiveX container
? User configurable layout including customized enterprise shared headers
? Real-time, multiplexed, market data pub-sub cache (RV based)
? Real-time Active X controls
    ? Quotes, Pages, News, Charts, Chains, Time and Sales
? Proprietary script interpreter (TDL)
? Visual Basic scripting integration (never shipped)

What?s happened since MSW?
? Moore?s Law
    ? Gigahertz Multi-processors, RAID, Gigabit Ethernet, real-time 3d graphics workstations
? Ubiquitous Internet Access
? Microsoft .Net Framework & ASP.Net
    ? XML, C#, WebForms, BizTalk?
? Mobile Computing
    ? Laptops, hand helds, cell phones
? Social Networks
? Open Source Paradigm

Ramifications of Mobile Computing
? User?s preferences, models, lists, links, history, etc. must be stored centrally and synchronized across multiple devices
? Functionality should degrade gracefully in ?occasionally disconnected? networks
? Use presence information to determine which devices active
? Necessitates the need for separating application logic from presentation layer 
    ? Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern?

Ramifications of Social Networks
? Must be aware of user?s identity, presence status, and logical roles (e.g. head of forex desk)
? Must be contact list aware including contact groups
? Integrated with Workflow infrastructure
? Some or all interactions and views of a model, layout, and/or control can be shared with others in real-time or asynchronously ?off line?

Ramifications of Open Source Paradigm
? Collaboratively design and implement overall architecture and interfaces with other stake holders
    ? Clients, prospects, information providers, academia
? Proprietary customization can be done by clients
? Cherry pick key components for commercialization