Company Name:	Qaqa.com
Business Area:	Financial Services
Business Focus:	Illiquid and Distressed Financial Assets
Location:	Jersey, Channel Islands
KEY BUSINESS REQUIREMENTS:
	Develop an on-line exchange where users can input prices with time limits and execute live orders real time on-line
	High level of interactivity should allow users to be automatically notified via both external e-mail service and internal messaging system of developments in the exchange
	Interactive messaging system should have “intelligent” filtering system so that each message is sent only to those users that potentially would be interested in that message
	Each user to have the ability to set alerts for certain price and size levels
	Users should be able to access the exchange from any computer connected to Internet via a standard Web browser
	Develop an on-line Forum facilities accessible from the exchange to build a strong user community
KEY TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS:
	Software design and hardware configuration should provide mission critical standard and be highly scalable to allow the site to cope with increase in number of users
	High level of encryption is required for security of transactions going through the exchange
	Webmaster (system operator) should have the ability to control the activities taking place in the exchange and chat-rooms to ensure the integrity of the exchange
	Software design should not require installation of any proprietary software on the users’ computers
	System should store all the information about any activity taking place in the exchange and chat-rooms and provide easy and flexible access to that information to authorised users
CONFIGURATION
	HARDWARE:
	Web/Application Server Compaq: ProLiant 6400 Pentium III Xeon 550MHz RAM 512 MB, HDD SCSI 9.1 GB
	Database Server: Compaq Proliant 6400 Pentium III Xeon 550 MHz RAM 512 MB, HDD SCSI 9.1 GB RAID 1
	SOFTWARE:
	Linux operating system
	Oracle 8i RDBMS
Qaqa.com approached Nairisoft as one-stop shop to develop a website for trading illiquid and distressed debt. Nairisoft wrote the specifications for the system, chose the network configuration, hardware and software. All the software development was done at Nairisoft’s R&D centre in Armenia which kept the costs at minimum. After delivery and installation of the first version of the system, Nairisoft entered into an on-going contract with Qaqa.com to administer and maintain the site. Below are some highlights of the overall system design.
Software implementation was based on Java (JFC, Java servlets, CORBA). To insure the passage through every type of Internet gate that is transparent to HTTP protocols Nairisoft developed a proprietary HTTP based high-level communication protocol. It is two-level encrypted and violates no security restrictions even in highly constrained and functionally limited networks. The entire system is based on pure Java applets and JFC/Swing package developed and distributed by Sun Microsystems and runs from either Microsoft Internet Explorer version 4 or higher, or Netscape Navigator version 4 or higher.
Figure1. Network structure
Figure1 shows Qaqa.com website’s network architecture. Application Servers have two 100 MBPS network interfaces: one with the outside world and the other with the database servers. For security reasons database servers are completely invisible from outside and placed in a separate network segment. This structure also provides exceptional parallel computing performance. A dedicated fiber optic communication channel links the website with the outside world. Red dashed boxes indicate additional servers to be added to increase sites capacity to deal with increased traffic.
Figure 2. Software structure
Figure 2 shows the logistics of information. The information request goes from the client applet to the web listener from where it is passed to the Server cartridge via special dynamically loaded and load balancing modules of Application Server. The server cartridge in turn refers the information request to the database either via stored procedures or directly. Obtained data is sent back to the client applet. The data storage is built on the basis of Oracle 8i. The entire system on every level of operation and data processing (from client side applet, passing through application server cartridges up to the database procedures) is implemented on the basis of multi-threaded object-oriented programming methodology.
Figure 3. Main trading screen
Figure 3 shows a snapshot of the main trading screen and user interface.