Germany's Baden-Württemberg Bank (BW Bank) has upgraded to the latest version of the kdb+tick application for streaming data analysis from Palo Alto-based Kx Systems.

The bank is using the application to analyze multi-asset arbitrage opportunities and create automated alerts to its trading systems. The software works with the bank's installation of Kx's kdb+ database.

The system serves the bank's proprietary trading desk, where about five traders use it to provide data on yield curves, volatility, intermarket spread and market depth, as well as feeding algorithmic engines and back-testing trading strategies, says Christoph Metzger, senior vice president at the bank in Stuttgart. He says the five trade equities, bonds, commodities, currencies, futures and options.

According to Metzger, kdb+tick also monitors different instruments and markets and creates alerts based on price movements.

Kx chief technology officer Simon Garland says the alerts generated by kdb+tick can automatically fire orders to trading systems, and that trading algorithms can even be written directly into the kdb+ database. The other analyses produced by the system can be viewed in the bank's own front-end display applications.

The bank had tried to create this functionality on its own but had no success. "We tried to do it with a normal relational database, and it didn't work because it was too slow," Metzger says. "For eight years, I thought we needed something. We always had the problem that we couldn't get information as quick as we needed."

Garland says that by using the Kx combination, the bank will also be able to consolidate functions previously performed by disparate technologies, such as feed handlers, analysis engines, tick capture and automated trading systems.

The application takes data from Reuters' datafeed, Metzger says, as well as direct connections to exchanges.

"What makes BW Bank more interesting than some American banks is that because it is in Europe… it has to do this for many exchanges worldwide… which is tougher than doing it for just a couple of the top US ones," Garland says.

The bank ordered an initial proof of concept in March and licensed kdb+tick in July. It initially went live with version 2.1 of the application, which did not feature some of the technological enhancements introduced later this year to cut data latency within kdb+tick (IMD, Nov. 7).

However, Garland says that the bank's installation was set up so that it could migrate almost immediately to the new version. The bank switched to the latest release, version 2.2 of kdb+tick, in October. "They would have been running 2.1, and run 2.2 in parallel before the cut over from the test system," Garland says. "Version 2.2 went into official production the week of Nov. 7 and would have been available for testing four weeks beforehand."

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