David Milne, Director, Database Technologies

Kara Cummings

Since issuing its first trade in 1882, the Chicago Stock Exchange (CHX) has grown to be a leading equity exchange in the United States, trading more than 3,500 NYSE, Amex, and NASDAQ and CHX-exclusive issues. CHX competes with and serves as an alternative to the NYSE, NASDAQ, Amex, and regional stock exchanges by combining the benefits of a regulated auction market and state-of-the-art trading technology. It was the first floor-based stock exchange to fully automate order execution so that orders sent to the trading floor could be routed, executed, and confirmed in less than one second. This innovation made it easier for investors to buy and sell when they wish.

In 2002, CHX was exhausting the capacity of its homegrown proprietary database, which was costly to maintain and cumbersome to manage. Recovery from a hardware failure could take three to four hours. In replacing the old system, CHX took the opportunity to seek a highly available solution. CHX met its high-availability and hardware-economy needs by deploying an enterprise grid using Oracle Database with Real Application Clusters, Oracle Application Server, and Oracle Enterprise Manager. The move limited CHX's hardware investment to only the server power it required at the time. In addition, incremental scaling will extend hardware life by allowing the continued use of the servers it outgrows. In 2004, the entire system was upgraded to 10g. CHX now runs their custom Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reporting database on Oracle Real Application Clusters 10g , configured on four HP TRU64 servers. The database contains 600 days worth of trade data and is approximately 150 gigabytes in size. The solution is managed through Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control and runs on less expensive HP ES40 servers and TRU64 UNIX.