Inventors:
Sergey Fradkov - New York NY, US
Leonid Iakovlev - Vantaa, FI
Anatoliy Trifel - Brooklyn NY, US
Andrew Meshkov - Brooklyn NY, US
International Classification:
G06F017/60
Abstract:
The present invention provides an add-on transaction system that interfaces a network of users with an existing on-line transaction execution system, without requiring significant modifications to the functionality and/or protocol of such transaction execution system. This is accomplished by providing a set of novel application programmer interfaces (API) which allows integration of specific transaction applications within the transaction system with virtually any existing transaction execution system on practically any platform. More specifically, two separate APIs are provided, a “transaction execution” API (“TE API”) and a “transaction alert” API (“TA API). The TE API provides the functionality of delivering trade information and user requests to the execution system, and the TA API allows the execution system to deliver real-time information to the user. The cooperation of the two APIs with the transaction system's core functionality provides an extremely flexible and secure way to implement two-way communication without actually modifying the transaction application itself. In another aspect of the present invention, the transaction system is implemented to receive user transaction requests via IP networks (such as the Internet which uses the “transmission control protocol/Internet protocol” (“TCP/IP”)). In a further aspect of the present invention, the transaction system is implemented to receive transaction requests via a wireless gateway, and more specifically via a digital packet-switched wireless gateway, which may be connected via the IP network to the transaction system. In a specific embodiment of the present invention, a financial transaction system is disclosed. According to yet another aspect of the present invention, an enterprise system having a novel unified architecture is disclosed which may be adopted for the IP network-based transaction system of the present invention. The enterprise system makes use of a set of APIs that renders the enterprise applications platform independent. The enterprise system consists of an enterprise system manager and a number of application servers. The application servers are capable of running applications on remote computers and present a highly reliable and scalable system for deployment. The system manager tracks and provides an “application state” in each instance of the application programs running on the distributed application servers, even though the necessary data is received as a series of unconnected “hits” in the IP network environment. The system manager unites information and applications residing on the different application servers within the otherwise unstructured IP network environment, so the applications work together seamlessly and efficiently, even if the types of application servers and related databases in the system are not compatible. In a further aspect of the enterprise system, a special screen definition language (“UNML”) has been developed to describe basic GUI elements such as text fields, images, input fields, command buttons, menus and tables. This is an embedded language that implements the “context free screen concept”, where every screen and every element of the screen is independent from other elements. Using the UNML, information can be transmitted to the users in a device independent fashion, so that transmitted information can be displayed on various wireless devices based on their unique browser. According to yet another aspect of the invention, a new, high level programming language, the Report Query Language (“RQL”) provides a programming environment similar to C, C++ and PERL, but makes it more convenient for programmers to manipulate and format relational and non-relational data. RQL also includes extensions which allow developers to rapidly create state-of-the-art Internet applications for Intranets and Web sites. A run time engine, and various software development kits are also available for RQL. RQL therefore simplifies the development of complex system, databases and network administration applications, as well as database applications and enterprise wide reporting applications for “traditional” client/server and Internet/Intranet environments. RQL may be used to develop the transaction application of the present invention.
