Requirements engineering and prototype of a currency market data system in a volatile financial service management

Abstract

As IT systems became more and more pervasive in companies, their stability, reliability and maintainability, as well as the demand for their enhancement, steadily increased. Due to the historical development in the last decades, IT systems are disjoined and redundancies are prevalent. It is a problem to combine several complex independent systems and their dependencies in addition to improving the systems usability, security, reliability, availability, fail safety, efficiency and maintainability.<br />The purpose of this study is to investigate the requirements of a unified market data system as a case study for a typical complex IT system and analyze possible implementation options within a bank. This is motivated by the expected increase in precision of the key figures and the ability to compare figures from independent systems which will then have a unified database for their calculations. The applicability of the design patterns is shown within a prototype. Legal frameworks, regulatory authorities and internal quality management contribute to the growing requirements for IT systems.<br />The approach taken comprises understanding the historical development of the legacy systems, analyzing the current state, defining requirements for a new system and finding implementation options which fit the requirements.<br />Concluding in a final general implementation plan it is shown that an in depth requirements analysis and state of the art best practices are a possible approach for unifying an information system in a sustainable way.