Categories : All, Case Study, Finance, Social Networks

Community Portal for Financial Trading and Stock Investment

Client Requirement

The site offers up-to-the-minute information, news,statistics and expert opinions on the current happenings in the stock market.

It tracks picks by professional analysts and various financial experts, so that the users can see how well they perform against the experts. This will allow users to assess the reliance on an individual’s advice and to benchmark their own investment performance against them.

The site helps users to share investment ideas, exchange market research and track peers’ investment performance.

The site also allows members to participate in market polls and provide rating for other members for their market picks.

In addition to the business-related attributes, the site also focuses on enhancing the users’ online trading experience through numerous convenient features such as blogs, discussion forum and market research reports, among others.

Project Challenges

The team faced the following challenges:

• Incorporating and managing up-to-date information,news, statistics and related data on the backend through 3rd party API and RSS feeds.
• Developing a sturdy & dependable framework to support the real-time updating of content on the site.
• Allowing the site to handle millions of users at the same time without slowing down.
• Ensuring safe and secure transfer of data while integrating RSS feeds and 3rd party APIs.
• Incorporating web usability principles while developing numerous features designed for enhancing the users’ community networking experience.
• Harmonizing the simultaneous execution of various integrated features and options while maintaining consistent load balance.

Technologies Used

Manpower

Planning

The following four-tier development approach was adopted to equip the site with numerous features and functionality mentioned before:

• The Database layer containing MySQL Server Database, Tables, triggers and so on
• The Data Access layer containing the Data Access DLL responsible for accessing data from database
• The Business Layer DLL consisting of all business logic procedures for modules like Reagent, Protocols, Facilities, Timer, Profile, Message center, Account settings, Network etc.
• The User Interface Layer which forms the Graphical User Interface of the website

Development Highlights

The design approach was built around PHP 5 and MySQL SERVER 5 due to the social networking nature of the website. Modules such as User Profiles, Invitations, Forums and Blogs were developed in PHP such that they can be executed directly from the UI layer. In order to most effectively access the database in an object-oriented context, an interface translating the object logic to the relational logic was used to communicate with the relational databases in an object-oriented manner. An intermediary abstraction layer was created for accessing data from the database. Stored procedures were used only for complex retrieval of data from multiple tables and were entirely avoided with conditional syntax to ensure smooth performance of the website. The UI layer was kept free of any business logic with images, applications and data being called from their respective servers. Sub- domains were used for the different areas of the website to guarantee scalability. Web usability guidelines were strictly followed during development and the interface was made easily navigable through judicious use of AJAX, CSS and HTML controls. The site was developed and fully functional within a span of 6 months.