Lab49, a consulting firm that builds advanced applications for global financial institutions, has formed a practice dedicated to developing Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) applications for the financial services industry.
WPF provides a development platform for graphical user interfaces that incorporates two- and three-dimensional graphics and animations, real-time data feeds, and user interaction.
"Current user interfaces, such as trade blotters and pricing screens, tend to pack traders' monitors with dense, inflexible grids of numbers with little enrichment or visualisation. They tend to present data, not information," says Daniel Chait, founder and director, Lab49. "WPF, a cornerstone of Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0, lowers the entry barrier for rich, attractive, visual, and interactive GUIs [graphic user interfaces]. The technology harnesses the full power of today's graphics hardware to provide a fast and responsive visualization of data."
As an early adopter of WPF, Lab49 has been prototyping and applying WPF to financial applications since its introduction. Lab49 is believed to be the first to create a dedicated WPF practice within the financial services industry. Initial client projects include developing a prototype for a buy-side order management system and an algorithmic trading workstation for a top investment bank.