Guest Speakers

Robert X. Qi (March 26th)

Title: Messaging in financial software systems

Abstract: This talk will explain how and why messaging systems are implemented in financial software. Two examples of messaging systems with vastly different intentions will be presented to the class. One system was implemented as an ETL tool in data warehouse during late 1990’s. The other system was implemented around 2003 and it is used to trigger real-time trades on the financial market. The presentation will focus on business and technical benefits the messaging systems brings to the firm.

Bio: Robert is a senior IT Specialist at IBM China. His main responsibilities include Business Performance Management (BPM) Competency Lead, Project Management, Lead Business Analyst. Prior professional experience include serving as Senior DBA, IT Consultant and IT Manager at Wall Street firms such as Credit Suisse and JP Morgan Chase and at Deloitte. His areas of expertise include database management, data analysis and IT service delivery management of finance and accounting systems. Robert holds an MBA from the City University of New York (2006) and B. Sc from the University of Toronto (2000)

Willington Tang (April 2nd)

Title: Software technology in equity management

Abstract: Do you want to know the secret of the current equity trading business? Do you want to know how the business making money with the technology? The equity trading business has been changing quite a lot from floor open cry to fully automated trading. Do you want to know what role the technology is playing in the business world? I would like to talk about the challenge that the equity business is facing and how the technology is being used to conduct the business.

Bio: Willington Tang is the Vice President and the Asia Head of Trading Service in Citigroup, responsible for client and exchange connectivity and common services. He got his first bachelor degree in Science from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and got the MBA degree from the University of Science and Technology of Hong Kong Previously worked in Deutsche Bank to build up the cash equity trading platform, rolled out execution system, global order management system, FIX client connectivity, Algorithmic Trading, DMA & DSA system, Index Arbitrage system. Before joining the financial sector, he also worked in Government, Telecom industry. Have over 20 years of experience, seeing the evolution of the computer technology, have a wide range of exposure to different technology from Mainframe, mid-range, to solaris and Linux, client server to three-tier technology.

Victor Yang (April 21st)

Title: Spring into action

Abstract:
  1. First of all he will show the architecture diagrams of a client facing 7x24 data delivery system. He will discuss the system's basic requirements and design goals of the system (robust, flexible and fast performance). He then will talk briefly about the development tools used: Eclipse, Maven(Nexus), continuous integration (luntbuild), statical analysis (FindBugs), network packet tracing(wireshark, fiddler 2).
  2. Less is better: code reuse, why Spring framework and others such commons-* helps us to achieve the design goals.
  3. How we use Spring framework, AOP and other best practices to facilitate each area of our development, unit testing. This part will show each area with code example. It covers but may not limited to: configuration management, password management, Spring JMS, Spring JDBC, network IO management, cache with AOP, job, JMX dynamic management, Job scheduling.

Bio: Victor Y. Yang is currently a team lead and vice president of MSCI Inc, a leading provider of investment decision support tools to investment institutions worldwide. He holds a MSCS from Georgia Tech. Since 1994 he has worked as one of key developers on enterprise applications for companies including IBM, Sun Microsystems, Telus, AT&T, SunLife and CIBC bank.