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Smart Alert's Automated News & Data Pager Alerts
| Description |
| Smart Alert
Communications was a small startup company implementing automated
news and data alerts to pagers. It's first service Stock!Alert
monitored real time stock quotes for changes in price and volume.
Subscribers could select a portfolio of securities to monitor and set
volume and price criteria for each security. Subscribers were able to
maintain their portfolio from any touch-tone phone and could receive
alerts on either their pager, their PCS digital phones, by email or
by fax.
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| Project |
| The project consisted of
designing and implementing a scaleable messaging and database
architecture for the Smart! Alert services.
Some of the project requirements
included:
- Handle hundreds of thousands of
stock price updates per day.
- Handle thousands of outgoing
messages in a dynamically scalable fashion.
- Handle multiple incoming
interactive voice lines, again in a dynamically scalable
fashion.
- Handle up to 20,000 subscriber
accounts with portfolios of up to 20 securities
- High availability, especially
during trading hours.
This project was implemented in two
stages:
- The first stage consisted of
designing and implementing a proof of concept system. Its
purpose was to test out and establish feature functionality
rather than performance requirements.
- The second stage consisted of
taking the knowledge gained from the proof of concept and
implementing the required scalability and robustness
requirements for in-market testing.
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| Solution |
| The solution was
implemented as a set of component applications running under Windows
NT and Windows 95.
A Sybase SQL server engine was used
to track and schedule outgoing messages and alerts. A second
database maintained subscriber, portfolio and current stock price
information. Triggers and stored procedures tracked changes to
subscribers stocks and communicated with the messaging subsystem any
alerts.
The component applications were
responsible for dynamically registering with the database and
allowed for plug and play scalability. When higher throughput was
required, additional instances of the messaging and voice components
where created either on the same or additional servers and the
system dynamically distributed the load of messages to these new
instances.
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| Technologies |
Windows NT Server,
Windows 95, Microsoft Visual C++, Multi-threaded C++, Microsoft
Visual Basic, OLE Automation, Microsoft Access, Sybase SQL Server,
Artisoft Visual Voice, Dialogic, Modem / Asynchronous I/O, TCP/IP
Sockets, Paging, PCS, Fax and SMTP mail.
Contact Us to discuss your next software development project |
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