Terry Lynch presented a a system for allowing end users to upload their own data to kdb for storage in a safe and reliable manner. The below is a quick outline of his talk and a link to his powerpoint. I found it extremely interesting as I've seen the need for something like this a few places but never actually seen such a good solution built.

Download the full powerpoint

Background Information: The Schonfeld Environment

  • A recently SEC-registered investment adviser (and once privately-held) trading and investment firm operating since 1988 under Steven Schonfeld
  • Invests its capital with portfolio managers engaging in a variety of strategies including quant stat-arb, fundamental equity/relative value and tactical
  • Adopted kdb+ in 2008 as part of a technological overhaul of ageing systems
  • 40+ trading groups, many using kdb either in a direct or hosted capacity
  • 50+ different datasets across all asset classes, all vendors, with deep history
  • Multiple high-throughput tickerplants covering level1, level2 and newswires
  • Almost 1 petabyte of data in kdb format and growing continuously
  • Emphasis on using kdb as a driver of a shared research environment

Typical Database structure and management

The next challenge...

  • Given this environment, and given that each user has unique data requirements, proprietary code and closely-held trade strategies, three challenges arise...
    1. How can a user persist their own (derived) data to this "virtual" db and do so in a manner which is optimal, safe, private and instantaneously visible in their vdb
    2. How can a user automate/schedule such derived datasets without oversight
    3. How can a user perform quality control tests to maintain integrity of this private data
  • This results in the need for APIs/tools which can achieve the above by:
    1. Giving the user a certain amount of control but not too much control
    2. Performing various checks/optimisations under the covers transparently to the user
    3. Alerting the users of any data discrepancies based on custom pre-defined criteria

Persistence Api

The Solution...

Download the full powerpoint

Conclusion

  • In summary, we have created three useful tools to enable non-expert kdb users to gain better use and more efficiency from the platform
  • The persistence API, scheduler and quality control framework combine to form a private, safe, unified and controllable environment for our users
  • It also helps to alleviate some burden from our in-house kdb development team by offloading data creation and maintenance to the users themselves
  • This can also reduce the time it takes to set up new datasets in a production environment as the users do not need to rely/wait on our in-house team
  • It allows users to maintain a level of secrecy by having direct and protected access to their proprietary q code, trading models and derived datasets

This presentation was by Terry Lynch