Active and real-time functionalities for electronic brokerage design

In this position paper, we discuss an architecture for developing next generation electronic brokerages using active and real-time functionalities. These electronic brokerages support timeliness requirements and allow users to express complex preferences. User preferences can be conveniently captured as event-condition-action (ECA) rules. The design allows pro-active monitoring of user preferences and execution of actions in a timely manner. A proof-of-concept prototype is implemented using Java in the context of online trading. The prototype consists of three major components: rule validator, active rule manager and event monitor