Caché and XML-based Data Exchange Standards

Introduction

Because of increasing business and governmental pressures to integrate their operations, the financial services industry is developing a number of standards for data exchange and other common functions. Standards such as XBRL, FpML, MDDL, RIXML, and FIXML are all specialized dialects of XML (Extensible Markup Language). Any financial services application with good support for XML will be able to communicate effectively using one or more of the emerging industry standards.

Efficient data exchange increases the need for fast, scalable data persistence. Financial services applications must be able to process and persist large amounts data very quickly. Plus, the data must be easily accessible via SQL for analysis and reporting purposes. This paper will examine various database technologies with regards to their suitability for use with XML-based standards. It will show that Caché, with its Unified Data Architecture and seamless XML parsing, is the ideal database for use with the XML-based standards of the financial services industry.