System and method for the automated brokerage of financial instruments

• US 8,615,454 B2
• Filed: 03/26/2009
• Issued: 12/24/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 10/22/2003
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Scottrade Incorporated (Charles Schwab Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Scottrade Incorporated (Charles Schwab Corporation)
• Inventors: Tully, Michael James, Scott, Virgil Michael
• Primary Examiner(s): JOHNSON, GREGORY L
• Application Number:
  US12/412,204
• Publication Number:
  US 20090240613A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,734 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 705/35
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/00 Finance; Insurance; Tax strategies; Processing of corporate or income taxes
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/04 Trading; Exchange, e.g. stocks, commodities, derivatives or currency exchange
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/06 Asset management; Financial planning or analysis

Abstract

Disclosed herein in a preferred embodiment is an automated financial instrument brokerage system wherein a front end layer interacts with customers to generate activity requests for an intermediate layer. The intermediate layer preferably processes the activity requests and places financial instrument orders on a financial market if appropriate. A backend layer preferably provides data to the intermediate layer for processing activity requests. Multiple heterogeneous front end customer applications may be supported by the same intermediate layer. Further, multiple backend layer applications may interact with the intermediate layer in a manner transparent to the front end layer. Further, scalability can be achieved be partitioning various tasks of the intermediate layer onto separate servers, and more preferably on separate redundant servers. Load balancers may then be used in the intermediate layer to provide distributed access to these servers. Also disclosed herein is a caching technique whereby turnaround time for processing activity requests can be reduced by reducing the number of times that the intermediate layer needs to interact with the backend layer.

Claims

1. A method of scaling an automated financial instrument brokerage system comprising, the method comprising:

within the brokerage system, the brokerage system comprising a plurality of applications in communication with a plurality of front end servers and a plurality of intermediate layer servers, the applications being configured to generate a plurality of activity requests related to one or more financial instruments in response to input from a remote client user, the activity requests having a plurality of activity request types, each front end server being configured to process a different type of activity request, registering at least one of the front end servers with at least one load balancer associated therewith;

receiving the activity requests from one or more of the applications communicating with the registered front end server;

directing the received activity requests from the one or more of the applications communicating with the registered front end server to the at least one load balancer based on the type of activity request;

distributing the directed activity requests from the at least one load balancer to the available intermediate layer server.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the activity request types comprise at least one of an order activity request, a customer account activity request, and a quote activity request.

3. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

providing a new redundant intermediate layer server; and

registering the new redundant intermediate layer server with the at least one load balancer associated with the registered front end server.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the intermediate layer servers comprise at least one of an order server, a customer account server, and a quote server.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein the at least one load balancer is a dedicated load balancer based on the particular type of activity request the at least one load balancer is to distribute.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising registering at least one of the intermediate layer servers with the at least one load balancer.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein distributing comprises monitoring, by the at least one load balancer, a plurality of response times from the intermediate layer servers.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein the at least one load balancer determines the availability of a particular intermediate layer server based on the response time of the particular intermediate layer server compared to the response times of the other intermediate layer servers.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the load balancers reside in an intermediate layer tier.

10. The method of claim 1, further comprising tracking a plurality of data to be routed from the registered front end server to one or more available intermediate layer servers, wherein the at least one load balancer comprises an internal flow table to store the tracked data.

11. A scalable automated financial instrument brokerage system for processing financial transactions, the system comprising:

a plurality of front end servers, the front end servers interfacing with a plurality of applications that generate a plurality of activity requests, said activity requests being related to one or more financial instruments and generated in response to input from a remote user, the activity requests having a plurality of activity request types;

a plurality of server groups for communication with the front end servers, each of the server groups comprising a plurality of intermediate layer servers configured to process a different type of activity request; and

a plurality of load balancers, each of the load balancers being associated with one of the server groups for distributing the activity requests thereto based on the type of activity request and based on a plurality of response times from each of the intermediate layer servers in the associated server group.

12. The system of claim 11 wherein the activity request types comprise at least one of an order activity request, a customer account activity request, and a quote activity request.

13. The system of claim 11 wherein the server groups comprise at least one of an order server group, a customer account server group, and a quote server group.

14. The system of claim 11, wherein at least one of the load balancers is a dedicated load balancer based on the particular type of activity request being distributed.

15. The system of claim 11, wherein each of the server groups is registered with at least one of the load balancers.

16. The system of claim 11, wherein the load balancers monitor a plurality of response times from the intermediate layer servers to determine which of the intermediate layer servers are available.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein the load balancers determine the availability of a particular intermediate layer server based on the response time of the particular intermediate layer server compared to the response times of the other intermediate layer servers.

18. The system of claim 11, wherein the load balancers reside in an intermediate layer tier.