Implementing the Swiss Exchange trading system

The Swiss Exchange (SWX) system is the most sophisticated, to our current knowledge, first fully computerised, stock exchange system integrating trading, clearing, settlement and member back offices. The system consists of two main components, the ES (Exchange System) and the TS (Trading System). The ES has only one instance run by SWX (Swiss Exchange) providing the core functionality allowing to trade against a central order book. The TS has at least one instance per SWX member. The paper focuses on aspects concerning the TS and its specific requirements. After a brief description of the design the paper concentrates on the difficulties encountered while solving the challenging and sometimes conflicting requirements of the project, the current solutions and their shortcomings. Other topics concern the development of tools for performance prediction, evaluation and tuning and the final testing and deployment of the system.