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London Stock Exchange Tackles System Problem

Posted by samzenpus on from the fix-the-glitch dept.

DMandPenfold writes "The London Stock Exchange has taken steps to resolve a system problem that occurred at 4.30pm Tuesday, which saw a delay to the start of the closing auction and knocked out automatic trades during a 42 second period. The problem occurred a day after the high profile launch of its new matching engine on the main equities market, based on the SUSE Linux system from Novell."

5 of 237 comments (clear)

  1. Well, well, well... by LordNacho · · Score: 1, Interesting

    This just shows that it's hard to build these highly available, low latency, massive usergroup systems. Previously there was a lot of chatter about the platforms (.NET, MSSQL 2003, etc...)

    The problem is more likely to be internal organisation than specific platforms.

    1. Re:Well, well, well... by the_womble · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Given that this was a showcase client for MS, it does not make them looks good.

      Given that the MS was involved in developing the TradeElect system (the Windows based one), so even is the fault lies in TradeElect rather than the MS platform, then its still at least partly MS's fault.

      Microsoft and Accenture developed a system that turned out not to be as good as the one developed by a small Sri Lankan company no-one had ever heard of.

  2. Re:"Oh well I guess Linux sucks then by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    That being said, Linux is just a better platform to build something like this on. Sure, you can do it with Windows and make it work, but it's just more and unnecessarily difficult.

    I keep hearing this, but never see any technical details. Why is this so? From hearsay, the use of Linux in finance/trading shops is widespread (for servers... clients are typically Windows), it could be true... or it could just be to reduce licensing costs rather than for purely technical reasons.

  3. Re:"Oh well I guess Linux sucks then by the_womble · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Licensing costs are trivial in the context of these sorts of systems. TradeElect cost £40m, the new system was £50m - but that was to buy the company, not just the software.

  4. Re:Someone skimped on testing by daid303 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Testing is just hard. Even with a perfect plan, and a perfect execution you're still going to miss things.

    I just spend 2 weeks finding a 6 year old bug, which only showed itself when the temperature of our product is somewhere at -5C, and then only on 75% of the total devices. Devices where tested at low as -40C, but those where lucky and kept working correctly, so nobody noticed before. Even after I found it I spend a week looking at the code to find what's really wrong.