FIX Protocol Ltd (FPL), developer of the FIX financial messaging standard, has launched version 1.2 of
FIX Adapted for Streaming (FAST) Protocol, its data compression standard.
The new version improves the ability to use FIX with FAST, specifically with regard to enumerations, time stamps and boolean data types. The improvements in the new version have been developed to be fully compatible with FAST version 1.1. According to FPL, the enhancements allow for greater efficiency gains.
The FAST Protocol was developed in response to increasing electronic trading volumes and market data messaging rates. FAST uses techniques such as implicit tagging, field encoding and binary representation of data to reduce message sizes, therefore cutting bandwidth requirements and latency.
“FAST 1.2 offers enhanced computing performance and I believe this will drive even greater adoption of the standard,” said Greg Maynard, system and product strategy officer at the International Securities Exchange and contributor to the FPL Market Data Optimisation Working Group, in a statement.
Rolf Andersson, co-chair FPL Market Data Optimisation Working Group and CEO of Pantor Engineering, added, “The incremental improvements that we have included to create FAST 1.2 present an excellent example of the value that FPL brings to the future development of the electronic trading industry.”