Apama vs. Streambase(or any other comparible)

Quote from itmediaco:

Complex event replay ("backtesting") isn't simply querying a SQL store and iterating through rows of input data. It's recreating temporal relations between captured external events AND query chains exactly as they occured in real-time. The problem with SQL is that you end up with a backlog of events, and everything is thrown out of sync. Based on my experience with Esper and Coral8, any object database (events as tuples) will maintain constant time.
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To be more precise on my comment: Each streams engine has its own extensions to SQL to work with time/etc. A common desire is for DB vendors to add these extensions so the goal of having the same SQL+extensions work for both backtesting and real-time processing can be achieved.

I have certain technical biases in favor of StreamBase over Coral8 but they're both high end solutions.
 
I'd like to respond to several of the comments regarding StreamBase.

Indeed, the product is capable of processing large data volumes, up to hundreds of thousands of messages/second from multiple feeds. In terms of hardware/systems, we have customers realizing outstanding performance and low latency on relatively inexpensive commodity Linux or Windows boxes. The StreamSQL language (graphical workflow or text-based) is very well-suited to processing real-time streams using time or event-based windows. An added plus is that it easily integrates real-time and stored data, but if your only requirement is processing real-time data, you would still definitely find StreamSQL and StreamBase very useful. Many customers start developing working prototypes in just a few hours to a day or so, and production-ready applications in a matter of a few weeks.

In terms of the question about running algorithms, you should be able to run your 120 simulated algorithms and 5 live algos without difficulty with StreamBase. If you have any questions, please let me know.

William Hobbib, VP of Marketing
StreamBase Systems
 
The input is much appreciated. It seems all these platforms claim to be the fastest, perhaps the # of miliseconds varies from trade to trade & at one time or another everyone is the fastest.
When we do deply one of these CEP's we will be looking for third party assistance.
 
Hi, I'm the GM of the Apama division, and happy to answer questions directly, or ask some of our users to help answer your questions directly.

Is there anything specific I can tell you about? Frankly, I don't think there is much comparison in terms of the completeness and maturity of the two products - SB is a pretty new company and hasn't demonstrated or proven any real traction on wall street for algorithmic trading (they talk a lot about it but can't really cite any customers). They usually send a marketing person into these kinds of message boards (looks like they already did) and claim they are the solution to world hunger.

On the other hand Apama is very well known for credible success and have a long list of customers - public reference customers like JP, Deutsche, ABN, Finamex, Aspect, etc.

So there's a huge difference in the products, as this list of customers can cite - we don't "just" go on and on about SQL as some sort of superior technical solution, it's a much deeper conversation than that - Java, EPL, and graphical interfaces should be discussed. There's a reason why we charge money for this stuff, there is no free alternative, you get what you pay for. If you're doing something real there is no reason why you should not consider a serious system. This system has been carefully designed for the needs of trading - all asset classes, and designed for ultra-high end performance and latency, has robust user interfaces, fault tolerance, etc.

Anyway, free free to shoot specific questions and I'll be happy to either answer them myself or ask some of our developer customer base to answer them - they tend to be very busy and usually don't track message boards but I thought I would offer to help.

By the way, it would be helpful to understand some specifics of what you're trying to do as well so I can orient comments - what asset class are you looking to trade in? Buy side or sell side? Can you give a general idea of the environment and requirements you have?

Hope to help out in a constructive way.

- Mark
 
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