CiX - Technical Requirements

Overview

The CiX Internet-based Securities trading platform was designed to operate in a high-performance and high-availability environment using generic Microsoft technology.

MS Windows NT Server

CiX is a Server-based application that requires MS Windows NT Server version 4 or MS Windows 2000 Server to operate.

It is assumed that the TCP/IP protocol is installed on the Server.

MS SQL Server

CiX data is stored in an MS SQL Server database. At present CiX support MS SQL Server version 7, although SQL Server 2000 is currently being evaluated.

The CiX database contains more than 300 tables and stored procedures. The physical database should have at least 200 Mbytes of initial storage allocated for the actual database and around the same amount of storage for the transaction log files. The "Automatically Grow" database size option should be enabled.

CiX uses an Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) connection between the web server application and the SQL Server database.

If the IIS Web Server and MS SQL Server software are operating on the same PC Server machine, then the "Named Pipes" protocol should be specified in the ODBC Data Source Name (DSN) configuration.

When the IIS Web Server and MS SQL Server software are operating on different PC Server machines, then the "TCP/IP" protocol should be specified in the ODBC Data Source Name (DSN) configuration.

back

MS Internet Information Server (IIS)

The CiX application uses MS Internet Server Application Programming Interface (ISAPI) IIS "Extensions" Dynamic Link Libraries (DLLs) for most of the program logic.

Either MS IIS version 4 or 5 must be available to run the CiX ISAPI Extensions.

An IIS "Virtual Directory" must be created to run the CiX web site. This Virtual Directory must have "Anonymous Login" enabled with "Execute" permissions so that users can log into the web site and run the code stored in the CiX ISAPI libraries. 

HTML Browser Thin Client

CiX outputs generic HTML and will run in conjunction with any contemporary browser. CAPIX recommends using either MS Internet Explorer version 4 or greater, or Netscape Navigator version 4.5 or greater.

The HTML generated by CiX uses Java Script, HTML "Frames" and a single "Cookie". Any browser used must support "Frames" and "Cookies". 

The browsers used must have the appropriate security permissions set to allow CiX to write a single Cookie to the Client PC. This Cookie is used for tracking CiX Session State.