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Bloomberg Open Sources Its Market Data Distribution Technology

Posted by samzenpus on from the free-and-open-market dept.

First time accepted submitter Cara_Latham writes "Hoping to spur innovation and collaboration, Bloomberg LP is opening its market data interfaces to anyone, without cost or restriction. The market data provider's application programming interface (API), known as BLPAPI (Bloomberg LP API), is already used by Bloomberg, its clients and other technology providers to build connections between financial firms' applications and Bloomberg's market data and applications. Today any technology professional, or even students at a university, can access BLPAPI to quickly build connections to market data feeds. The BLPAPI interface works with a number of programming languages and operating systems, including Java, C, C++, .NET, COM and Perl."

2 of 25 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Philanthropy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The *API* is free, not the data feeds, which means you can create third-party applications without a terminal, but will need one (or one of their appliances) to test it and use their data. So, unless you are willing to open your wallet and grab a few thousand a month, it's probably not that useful for someone that doesn't have a contract with them.

  2. Re:Philanthropy by ZaphDingbat · · Score: 4, Informative

    I've actually contacted Bloomberg to ask about this, and they're not even open-sourcing anything. They're announcing their intention to form a committee to create open standards based on their tech. This is great because it will help fill gaps that AMQP and others are trying to fill, but I'm not sure it deserves an announcement until, you know, there's actually something to look at.