From alex at owal.co.uk Fri Sep 1 01:47:07 2006 From: alex at owal.co.uk (alex at owal.co.uk) Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2006 09:47:07 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Banking-pm] Welcome to the Banking.pm list Message-ID: <42699.193.26.4.35.1157100427.squirrel@sflink.net> Welcome to the Banking.pm list The aim for this list is to discuss the particular problems faced by perl programmers in the financial industries. It's membership will probably overlap with London.pm but is open to anyone in the world. Alex McLintock List Maintainer From BHolzman at iseoptions.com Fri Sep 1 04:27:49 2006 From: BHolzman at iseoptions.com (Holzman, Benjamin) Date: Fri, 1 Sep 2006 07:27:49 -0400 Subject: [Banking-pm] ...greetings and salutations... Message-ID: Hi all! Just a quick note introducing myself... I'm Benjamin Holzman and I work for the International Securities Exchange (ISE) in NY. I've been a primarily-Perl programmer since 1995, have given talks at a number of Perl conferences and have a few CPAN modules; the most widely-used being XML::Generator. I used to work at a startup called Longitude where we developed the concept of parimutuel derivatives and built a matching engine that has been used to offer parimutuel auctions for economic derivatives since October 2002, and more recently for energy derivatives. About 5 months ago, the ISE bought Longitude's IP and so that's where I work now. Although the core equilibrium calculations in the matching engine are written in C, the rest of the system is Perl. Well, except for an in-memory threaded object database that we wrote in C (sort of like memcached but with indexing). In addition to the matching engine, we also have an HTML::Mason-based front-end trading system. The curious can see a public prices-only version of the trading system at http://www.eiadprices.com/ (for energy products) or http://auctions.cme.com/ (for economic derivatives; access requires a somewhat involved registration process at the CME [Chicago Mercantile Exchange], so the impatient should just check out the energy site). More information is available at http://www.longitude.com/ and also http://www.economicderivatives.com/. Looking forward to hearing about other uses of Perl in Finance! Ben -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.pm.org/pipermail/banking-pm/attachments/20060901/2f5896c7/attachment.html From martin.bower at gmail.com Fri Sep 8 06:26:16 2006 From: martin.bower at gmail.com (Martin Bower) Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2006 14:26:16 +0100 Subject: [Banking-pm] London based member Message-ID: <7969e3b50609080626l5fed72b7jc38a539678478258@mail.gmail.com> Hi, as per Alex's email, thought I'd post a brief description of what I do ... I sit on a prop trading desk in London, and manage electronic trading systems (Redibook from Goldmans, Bloomberg, Fidessa, Reuters, Eurex, GL etc) perl is used around all of these systems, to transfer data in/out of front,back and middle office. I'm mostly Solaris based, but also use XP (with Eclipse & Epic perl - great) to build Wx applications. I use an intranet (Apache, mod_perl and TT ) to run perl applications, which interface with various databases, and the traders here use this to enter/modify data. I generally try and build web apps to take care of daily tasks, to remove the risk of mistakes and also to pass the tasks onto other people. I'm currently working on a Fix electronic order routing project, which is mostly Java based (although I have very limited Java skills for now). This is controlled/monitored by perl processes, and web apps. Apologies for any typos, I'm writing this on a Bloomberg keyboard - which is horrible, and I'm trying to lose it. If anyone has any experience of perl and Bloomberg, I'd be very interested in hearing from you. I'd also be interested in seeing how easy it would be to move my web apps into Catalyst or Jifty. Martin -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.pm.org/pipermail/banking-pm/attachments/20060908/fc4ed06e/attachment.html From billy at cowfish.org.uk Fri Sep 8 06:53:38 2006 From: billy at cowfish.org.uk (Billy Abbott) Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2006 14:53:38 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Banking-pm] Another introduction Message-ID: I'm another London based person, although I'm not quite a banking person. I work for a data and analysis tools company on the financial identifier and data side, using perl for data munging, validation and database loading. I'm working on VMS with perl, DCL, java and C++ as well as with occasional windows and unix systems - whatever comes our way. We have some nice perl based build tools as well as having perl as the default tool and data loading framework coding language. We play around with quite a lot of XS to interface with all our C++ based data systems as well as tweaking way too many modules to be properly OS independant (please think of is VMS-ites next time you hardcode a / in a filename). I seem to be doing more management than coding these days, but when I do get my hands dirty it's more often than not in perl. Apart from today, of course - I'm currently procrastinating rather than playing with a java web app. --billy -- Look, I totally refuse to accept that I'm in denial Billy Abbott billy at cowfish dot org dot uk From Scott.Stensland at morganstanley.com Fri Sep 8 07:01:13 2006 From: Scott.Stensland at morganstanley.com (Stensland, Scott (IT)) Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2006 15:01:13 +0100 Subject: [Banking-pm] Another introduction In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <315FA12EBC7B1441B0AF01EBAF46B2F40A3A1BA8@LNWEXMB33.msad.ms.com> Hi I am using perl to write an automated regression harness of a set of java serverside daemons. It does loads of calls to DB2 / udb / sybase / MQ series / xml / soap / data compares. Basically run real prod data and prod processing into a pair of test environments. All server side, however I now need to throw together a web front end so other IT staff can execute the Harness. All these perl tools I wrote from scratch over past 5 years. More challenging bits where writing a data diff tool Scott -------------------------------------------------------- NOTICE: If received in error, please destroy and notify sender. Sender does not intend to waive confidentiality or privilege. Use of this email is prohibited when received in error. From alex at owal.co.uk Fri Sep 8 07:30:28 2006 From: alex at owal.co.uk (alex at owal.co.uk) Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2006 15:30:28 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Banking-pm] London based member In-Reply-To: <7969e3b50609080626l5fed72b7jc38a539678478258@mail.gmail.com> References: <7969e3b50609080626l5fed72b7jc38a539678478258@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <4254.193.26.4.35.1157725828.squirrel@sflink.net> > Hi, > > as per Alex's email, thought I'd post a brief description of what I do ... > > I sit on a prop trading desk in London, Oooh. Prop trading sounds scary to me - my mate from college was thinking of giving it a go. (ex trader - now works for Bloomberg). Basically you are self employed and have a massive "loan" from some third party company so that you can do trading. Ok it isnt really a loan : the capital is essentially the third party's - and they take a big chunk of the profits. Presumably Martin works for one of these third parties - who is also providing the desk, the equipment, the bloomberg feeds, etc > and manage electronic trading > systems (Redibook from Goldmans, Bloomberg, Fidessa, Reuters, Eurex, GL > etc) > perl is used around all of these systems, to transfer data in/out of > front,back and middle office. I am expecting that phrase to come up a lot. > I'm mostly Solaris based, but also use XP (with Eclipse & Epic perl - > great) to build Wx applications. Solaris and Linux myself. I sit in front of a windows XP box which runs Tomcat / Java/ Eclipse > I'm currently working on a Fix electronic order routing project, Ha - the number of times I've been contacted by pimps about "FIX" when all I put on my cv was that "I fix things". Alex From alex at owal.co.uk Fri Sep 8 07:33:41 2006 From: alex at owal.co.uk (alex at owal.co.uk) Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2006 15:33:41 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Banking-pm] Another introduction In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <6143.193.26.4.35.1157726021.squirrel@sflink.net> Billy Abbot wrote: > I'm another London based person, although I'm not quite a banking person. > I work for a data and analysis tools company on the financial identifier > and data side, using perl for data munging, validation and database > loading. Still very important Billy :-) I did my first perl contract at Reuters - not technically banking but people assume it was to do with their financial data feeds, and who am I to correct them. My guess is that you know about things like ISINs and CUSIPs? Alex From mike at wormers.net Fri Sep 8 07:23:07 2006 From: mike at wormers.net (Michael Lewis) Date: Fri, 08 Sep 2006 15:23:07 +0100 Subject: [Banking-pm] Another introduction In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I'm another London based person. Now working mainly on model integration. Use of Perl is slightly different. I tend to use it with Swig to generate quick prototypes & testing. Analytics wise I think will be done in C++/Boost/Stl for some time. Systems development, I think Ruby or Perl provide much better languages/environments for building distributed systems on top of analytics than say Java. -- Mike Lewis From billy at cowfish.org.uk Fri Sep 8 07:26:47 2006 From: billy at cowfish.org.uk (Billy Abbott) Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2006 15:26:47 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Banking-pm] Another introduction In-Reply-To: <6143.193.26.4.35.1157726021.squirrel@sflink.net> References: <6143.193.26.4.35.1157726021.squirrel@sflink.net> Message-ID: On Fri, 8 Sep 2006 alex at owal.co.uk wrote: > Billy Abbot wrote: >> I'm another London based person, although I'm not quite a banking person. >> I work for a data and analysis tools company on the financial identifier >> and data side, using perl for data munging, validation and database >> loading. > > Still very important Billy :-) Too right it is - without me and mine all you banky people would have nothing...NOTHING I TELL YOU! or something :) > My guess is that you know about things like ISINs and CUSIPs? I look after our sedol feed, have done a lot of ID management stuff due to the various joys of ISIN, sedol and cusip and am still procrastinating rather than modifying our identifier editing web application... --billy -- I haven't has so much fun since the pigs ate my little sister Billy Abbott billy at cowfish dot org dot uk From alex at owal.co.uk Fri Sep 8 07:41:14 2006 From: alex at owal.co.uk (alex at owal.co.uk) Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2006 15:41:14 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Banking-pm] Another introduction In-Reply-To: <315FA12EBC7B1441B0AF01EBAF46B2F40A3A1BA8@LNWEXMB33.msad.ms.com> References: <315FA12EBC7B1441B0AF01EBAF46B2F40A3A1BA8@LNWEXMB33.msad.ms.com> Message-ID: <10914.193.26.4.35.1157726474.squirrel@sflink.net> Scott wrote: > I am using perl to write an automated regression harness of a > set of java serverside daemons. I think this is an area where perl is great. I've done an awful lot of reconciliation in perl for regression testing and unit testing. Its also important to note that just because there is some java involved it doesnt mean that jUnit is the only tool you can use. Alex From alex at owal.co.uk Fri Sep 8 07:53:21 2006 From: alex at owal.co.uk (alex at owal.co.uk) Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2006 15:53:21 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Banking-pm] AlexMc introduction Message-ID: <18327.193.26.4.35.1157727201.squirrel@sflink.net> Hello, I'm Alex McLintock. Ive been contracting in London for more years than I care to remember - mostly doing web stuff but more recently concentrating on banking. I went to Imperial College as did many other members of London.pm I dont turn up much to London.pm social meetings because they clash with the London Science Fiction Circle pub meeting on the first Thursday of the month. I've done contracts for Deutsche Bank, Lehman Brothers, Brevan Howard, KBC Financial Products, and most recently a certain company with a famous building in the City. Deutsche Bank was my entry into banking - I was using perl to help build their C++ pricing application. The financial stuff was done by other people but it first introduced me to the environment. At Lehman Brothers I worked in Fixed Income Analytics - basically being a web developer providing financial information - such as time series and the like - to the internal traders. This was both Java and perl/ At Brevan Howard I was involved in feeding data into a Murex trading system - and more importantly taking reports coming out of it and feeding them elsewhere. I did a lot of reconciliation between similar looking files in perl - there is no way that diff by itself could cut it :-) Bored yet? At KBC I spent three months debugging a reporting application which generated spreadsheets for accountants. This was in their Fund Derivative business. Currently I am using perl and java on a Risk reporting system. We take data from all over the company, mung it together in a database, and have a fancy system for viewing that data. Questions? There will be a test later. Alex From ben at bpfh.net Fri Sep 8 08:04:21 2006 From: ben at bpfh.net (Ben Evans) Date: Fri, 08 Sep 2006 16:04:21 +0100 Subject: [Banking-pm] Introduction: Ben Evans Message-ID: <45018675.3020605@bpfh.net> Hi, I'm Ben Evans - I work at a major investment bank in London (although when I'm posting here it's from a personal account, so I'm definitely not speaking ex cathedra). A lot of you will know me from London.pm and other places. My work is in the engineering and infrastructure space at the moment, although I retain an interest in more front office type work. I'm responsible for a mail product (in Perl) and a number of web infra systems in Java. Thanks, Ben From nik at ngo.org.uk Fri Sep 8 08:16:59 2006 From: nik at ngo.org.uk (Nik Clayton) Date: Fri, 08 Sep 2006 16:16:59 +0100 Subject: [Banking-pm] Intro: NIKC Message-ID: <4501896B.3000808@ngo.org.uk> Given the sudden flurry of introductions I thought I'd jump in. I'm Nik Clayton, NIKC on CPAN. I work for a bank (well, Citigroup, and we own several banks) but I don't do anything on the banking side. I'm one of the very small team that does the engineering for the e-mail backbone. That's pretty much everything between the Internet and the internal Exchange servers. So, lots of Perl. All of the antispam is Perl, as is the antivirus (perl XS wrapper around a vendor's C++ AV engine), the other general filtering, and the message archiving system for compliance. We also use Perl in the glue for our build system (all our configurations are deployed as versioned Solaris packages which makes things easier), and for running thousands of automated tests across our configurations before they get deployed. Everything from "Does Sendmail start up correctly given this new configuration file?" to "Do all these sample messages get filtered in the expected way with this new configuration?". We also use it for automated tests of a server's configuration and network connectivity. There are a few Test::* modules that have come out of this work. The other thing that's sprung from it has been my continued maintenance of SVN::Web, since we needed a web based front end to our Subversion repository and, at the time, that was the closest fit. N From alex at owal.co.uk Fri Sep 8 08:36:27 2006 From: alex at owal.co.uk (alex at owal.co.uk) Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2006 16:36:27 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Banking-pm] Any newbies? Message-ID: <46359.193.26.4.35.1157729787.squirrel@sflink.net> Have we persuaded anybody to join the list who doesnt work in finance - but is thinking about it? Alex From dave at dave.org.uk Fri Sep 8 08:32:26 2006 From: dave at dave.org.uk (Dave Cross) Date: Fri, 08 Sep 2006 16:32:26 +0100 Subject: [Banking-pm] Another Introduction Message-ID: <20060908163226.jbunoqi73ksgkk0s@webmail.mag-sol.com> Since everybody else seems to be doing it. Many of you will know me from london.pm, but here goes... I used a lot of Perl whilst I was contracting in the City of London in the second half of the 1990s. Most of what I was going involved parsing data feeds in order to load them into databases (mostly Sybase) and them producing either outgoing data feeds or web-based reports out of those databases. In about five years, I did a grand tour of banks - Paribas (now BNP), Nomura, Warburgs (now UBS), CSFB, IBJ (now Mizuho) and probably more that I've forgotten. I wrote a book (http://manning.com/cross/) based on those experiences. In about 2001 I decided that banking was dull and I decided I would have more fun in the Noo Medja industry and spent some time working for people like Sportal.com, QXL, Karmadownload, Bibliotech and (more recently) Guardian Unlimited and the BBC. Last year I decided to come back to the City and I'm now back working in UBS. Well, strictly speaking I'm working for Perot Systems who manage all of UBS' infrastructure. And I'm back parsing data feeds, loading them into a database and producing web reports. Currently this data is all about NAS and SAN storage usage. Here's an important question - is banking.pm planning to have any meetings? Dave... -- site: http://dave.org.uk/ blog: http://blog.dave.org.uk/ From a.mcgregor at pasty.ltd.uk Fri Sep 8 08:33:55 2006 From: a.mcgregor at pasty.ltd.uk (Andrew McGregor) Date: Fri, 08 Sep 2006 16:33:55 +0100 Subject: [Banking-pm] Any newbies? In-Reply-To: <46359.193.26.4.35.1157729787.squirrel@sflink.net> References: <46359.193.26.4.35.1157729787.squirrel@sflink.net> Message-ID: <45018D63.80503@pasty.ltd.uk> alex at owal.co.uk wrote: > Have we persuaded anybody to join the list who doesnt work in finance - > but is thinking about it? > I'm here just being nosey. I don't work for a bank but I do want to be credited as the first to make the joke 'but I do have a bank account'. I live in Bristol but am on a contract in West London - Perl/PostgreSQL/TT - which is coming to an end so I can join a pre-revenue startup closer to home. I'm interested in this list as I applied for a banking role at the same time as I got my current role, and I was interested in finding out how banking roles differ and why there is a perception that they are difficult to get in to regarding the chicken and egg scenario of banking experience. From dbcm at profundos.org Fri Sep 8 08:36:08 2006 From: dbcm at profundos.org (Delfim Machado) Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2006 16:36:08 +0100 Subject: [Banking-pm] Any newbies? In-Reply-To: <46359.193.26.4.35.1157729787.squirrel@sflink.net> References: <46359.193.26.4.35.1157729787.squirrel@sflink.net> Message-ID: <20060908153608.GC18245@fear.geek-nest.org> Hi all, well, i don't work in the finance area. My interest here is just to look around... Sometime ago i had a purpose to go to the financial area, but perl was not involved. BTW, since everyone is making introductions, here is mine. I work on a Portuguese ISP, SAPO, from Portugal Telecom group, in Portugal. My job here is radius(radiator), traffic accounting and billing, messenger (jabberd, with some POE components) and some litte mason code for frontends. Cheers On 08/09/06 16:36 +0100, alex at owal.co.uk wrote: >Have we persuaded anybody to join the list who doesnt work in finance - >but is thinking about it? > >Alex >_______________________________________________ >Banking-pm mailing list >Banking-pm at pm.org >http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/banking-pm From dave at dave.org.uk Fri Sep 8 08:39:16 2006 From: dave at dave.org.uk (Dave Cross) Date: Fri, 08 Sep 2006 16:39:16 +0100 Subject: [Banking-pm] WCIT Message-ID: <20060908163916.wvjw4g66aok4kwow@webmail.mag-sol.com> Has anyone had any contact with Worshipful Company of Information Technologists (http://www.wcit.org.uk/). They are one of the newer City Livery Companies. I have to confess that the idea of Open Source programmers infiltrating a City institution like this has a strange appeal to me. It's the only chance that any of us have of becoming Lord Mayor :) Dave... -- site: http://dave.org.uk/ blog: http://blog.dave.org.uk/ From BHolzman at iseoptions.com Fri Sep 8 08:40:05 2006 From: BHolzman at iseoptions.com (Holzman, Benjamin) Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2006 11:40:05 -0400 Subject: [Banking-pm] introduction (repost) Message-ID: [ I had sent this last week but as there seem to be many more people here now, I'm reposting it ] Hi all! Just a quick note introducing myself... I'm Benjamin Holzman and I work for the International Securities Exchange (ISE) in NY. I've been a primarily-Perl programmer since 1995, have given talks at a number of Perl conferences and have a few CPAN modules; the most widely-used being XML::Generator. I used to work at a startup called Longitude where we developed the concept of parimutuel derivatives and built a matching engine that has been used to offer parimutuel auctions for economic derivatives since October 2002, and more recently for energy derivatives. About 5 months ago, the ISE bought Longitude's IP and so that's where I work now. Although the core equilibrium calculations in the matching engine are written in C, the rest of the system is Perl. Well, except for an in-memory threaded object database that we wrote in C (sort of like memcached but with indexing). In addition to the matching engine, we also have an HTML::Mason-based front-end trading system. The curious can see a public prices-only version of the trading system at http://www.eiadprices.com/ (for energy products) or http://auctions.cme.com/ (for economic derivatives; access requires a somewhat involved registration process at the CME [Chicago Mercantile Exchange], so the impatient should just check out the energy site). More information is available at http://www.longitude.com/ and also http://www.economicderivatives.com/. Looking forward to hearing about other uses of Perl in Finance! Ben -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.pm.org/pipermail/banking-pm/attachments/20060908/de19bf23/attachment.html From alex at owal.co.uk Fri Sep 8 09:00:59 2006 From: alex at owal.co.uk (alex at owal.co.uk) Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2006 17:00:59 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Banking-pm] Another Introduction In-Reply-To: <20060908163226.jbunoqi73ksgkk0s@webmail.mag-sol.com> References: <20060908163226.jbunoqi73ksgkk0s@webmail.mag-sol.com> Message-ID: <8968.193.26.4.35.1157731259.squirrel@sflink.net> > Here's an important question - is banking.pm planning to have any > meetings? > > Dave... That is of course a question for the members - if they turn up then there will be a meeting. However I am not particularly that interested in organising one. There are already too many techie meetings that I could go to - Java, Perl, Drupal, Apache, etc, etc, etc. Of course anyone who likes playing board games could come round to my house on Sat the 23rd September :-) Alex From alex at owal.co.uk Fri Sep 8 09:08:16 2006 From: alex at owal.co.uk (alex at owal.co.uk) Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2006 17:08:16 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Banking-pm] Any newbies? In-Reply-To: <45018D63.80503@pasty.ltd.uk> References: <46359.193.26.4.35.1157729787.squirrel@sflink.net> <45018D63.80503@pasty.ltd.uk> Message-ID: <13868.193.26.4.35.1157731696.squirrel@sflink.net> > I live in Bristol but am on a contract in West London - > Perl/PostgreSQL/TT - which is coming to an end so I can join a > pre-revenue startup closer to home. Are you looking for London work though or are you sorted out for paying work? I'm sure that there are a few perl vacancies we could push you towards :-) > I was interested in finding out how > banking roles differ There are a number of good articles about that - which I will try to dig up some other time. > and why there is a perception that they are > difficult to get in to regarding the chicken and egg scenario of banking > experience. Every job I've ever done has involved a certain amount of domain knowledge. For instance I did a contract for the National Air Traffic Service, and I had to learn their terminology for airports and weather conditions, and the like. Now that I could do in a few days - maybe weks for some of the harder concepts. Now banking is complicated - it takes you hours to understand the basics - but years to get even a small fraction of the whole thing. If you turned up for a banking contract with no knowledge of the business then you would be useless for a significant length of time whilst you learnt the business required. No one will teach you. You can pick up some knowledge from books and courses - but there is no substitute for the time taken to do the work: living and breathing the environment. From billy at cowfish.org.uk Fri Sep 8 08:59:34 2006 From: billy at cowfish.org.uk (Billy Abbott) Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2006 16:59:34 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Banking-pm] WCIT In-Reply-To: <20060908163916.wvjw4g66aok4kwow@webmail.mag-sol.com> References: <20060908163916.wvjw4g66aok4kwow@webmail.mag-sol.com> Message-ID: On Fri, 8 Sep 2006, Dave Cross wrote: > Has anyone had any contact with Worshipful Company of Information > Technologists (http://www.wcit.org.uk/). They are one of the newer > City Livery Companies. I tried - I emailed 3 or 4 times and even gave them a call, but I got no answer to either. I do recruiting and training stuff here as well as code, so having a "we work towards making our engineers journeyman of the WCIT" might have been a nice tag line, in addition to my own membership of course... I am now just off the north edge of The City, so I don't know if they'd take me any more. If anyone has got in contact with them I'm still very much interested to see if they'd have me. --billy -- There's nothing like a little divine retribution before breakfast. Billy Abbott billy at cowfish dot org dot uk From david at cantrell.org.uk Fri Sep 8 08:53:41 2006 From: david at cantrell.org.uk (David Cantrell) Date: Fri, 08 Sep 2006 16:53:41 +0100 Subject: [Banking-pm] Any newbies? In-Reply-To: <4501916D.2000006@cantrell.org.uk> References: <46359.193.26.4.35.1157729787.squirrel@sflink.net> <4501916D.2000006@cantrell.org.uk> Message-ID: <45019205.2010206@cantrell.org.uk> alex at owal.co.uk wrote: > Have we persuaded anybody to join the list who doesnt work in finance - > but is thinking about it? Yes. I'm spying on you all. I've previously worked in a financey company - when I was a very junior wookie I wooked for a medical malpractice underwriter. I didn't like it. I was treated very poorly and the cunts in suits were sooooo full of themselves. Later at a financial publisher things were again not so good. Consequently, I have a very poor opinion of the financial industry. But I've been told that it's not so bad really, so I'm going to lurk and listen and see how much you all rant about the 'orrible prima-donnas you work for before I make up my mind. -- David Cantrell | WARNING: MAY CONTAIN BARYONS From a.mcgregor at pasty.ltd.uk Fri Sep 8 09:33:11 2006 From: a.mcgregor at pasty.ltd.uk (Andrew McGregor) Date: Fri, 08 Sep 2006 17:33:11 +0100 Subject: [Banking-pm] Any newbies? In-Reply-To: <13868.193.26.4.35.1157731696.squirrel@sflink.net> References: <46359.193.26.4.35.1157729787.squirrel@sflink.net> <45018D63.80503@pasty.ltd.uk> <13868.193.26.4.35.1157731696.squirrel@sflink.net> Message-ID: <45019B47.3040307@pasty.ltd.uk> alex at owal.co.uk wrote: > Are you looking for London work though or are you sorted out for paying work? > I'm sure that there are a few perl vacancies we could push you towards :-) > Yep, all sorted, but thank you. > for some of the harder concepts. Now banking is complicated - it takes you > hours to understand the basics - but years to get even a small fraction of > the whole thing. If you turned up for a banking contract with no knowledge > of the business then you would be useless for a significant length of time > whilst you learnt the business required. No one will teach you. You can > pick up some knowledge from books and courses - but there is no substitute > for the time taken to do the work: living and breathing the environment. > Oh, now you put it that way - I'll see if I can at least pick up some buzz words for next time I'm looking :) From ben at bpfh.net Fri Sep 8 09:50:11 2006 From: ben at bpfh.net (Ben Evans) Date: Fri, 08 Sep 2006 17:50:11 +0100 Subject: [Banking-pm] Language, Timothy In-Reply-To: <45019205.2010206@cantrell.org.uk> References: <46359.193.26.4.35.1157729787.squirrel@sflink.net> <4501916D.2000006@cantrell.org.uk> <45019205.2010206@cantrell.org.uk> Message-ID: <45019F43.7040302@bpfh.net> In his own, unique way, Dave seems to have kindly raised the issue of what the age rating for this list should be. Personally, as a fair few people seem to be posting from work addresses, I'd vote for making the list PG-rated, so as not to trip any employers naughty words filters? What do the rest of you chickens think? Ben David Cantrell wrote: From merijnb at iloquent.com Fri Sep 8 12:12:14 2006 From: merijnb at iloquent.com (Merijn Broeren) Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2006 21:12:14 +0200 Subject: [Banking-pm] Language, Timothy In-Reply-To: <45019F43.7040302@bpfh.net> References: <46359.193.26.4.35.1157729787.squirrel@sflink.net> <4501916D.2000006@cantrell.org.uk> <45019205.2010206@cantrell.org.uk> <45019F43.7040302@bpfh.net> Message-ID: <20060908191214.GA18000@brugman.iloquent.nl> Quoting Ben Evans (ben at bpfh.net): > In his own, unique way, Dave seems to have kindly raised the issue of > what the age rating for this list should be. > > Personally, as a fair few people seem to be posting from work addresses, > I'd vote for making the list PG-rated, so as not to trip any employers > naughty words filters? > > What do the rest of you chickens think? > I actually had to back and spell his email to figure out what you were wibbling on about. But that's because my most common net hangout is ukrm where that is an affectionate term and the language is much more colourful in general. ;-) -- Merijn Broeren | Bob's guide to high explosives for dummies: | Chapter One: When the pin is pulled and safety lever | discarded, Mr. Grenade is no longer your friend. From cos at indeterminate.net Fri Sep 8 15:42:00 2006 From: cos at indeterminate.net (John Costello) Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2006 15:42:00 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Banking-pm] Introduction (and Re: Any newbies?) In-Reply-To: <46359.193.26.4.35.1157729787.squirrel@sflink.net> Message-ID: On Fri, 8 Sep 2006 alex at owal.co.uk wrote: > Have we persuaded anybody to join the list who doesnt work in finance - > but is thinking about it? > > Alex Hello, I don't live in London (or the UK for that matter), but I am interested in the finance industry. Currently, I work in the IT organization of an EDA company, performing odd jobs often with perl; so far, no one has asked me to do anything involving thrown bowlers. My current project involves migration of data from a shift-jis application, including romaji and kanji characters, into a fixed-length format fit for upload into another system. This has involved digging into unicode, which has been interesting, as well as data munging. I'm glad that Dave Cross mentioned his data munging book. I've knocked out perl scripts for various tasks at this company. Previously, I worked in IT for two other organizations (sendmail, poke users in eyes, make computers work) and got a work trip to London out of one of the gigs. Not bad. Before all of that, I worked for a tiny software company that dealt with HR systems. What others have said about the specifics of finance applies to the HR industry--there are terminologies and practices that you have to breathe in over time. Nobody teaches them to you. Most of my work at that company involved data munging, report creation, and the like using an in-house scripting language that was similar to perl. Lately I've been using perl under cygwin, as ActiveState didn't have the modules I needed and I there were periods when I didn't have a *nix server to work on. I've also worked on perl under Solaris and Linux, doing various things to and with cgi, sql, html, and text files. John From cos at indeterminate.net Fri Sep 8 16:04:00 2006 From: cos at indeterminate.net (John Costello) Date: Fri, 8 Sep 2006 16:04:00 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Banking-pm] Language, Timothy In-Reply-To: <45019F43.7040302@bpfh.net> Message-ID: On Fri, 8 Sep 2006, Ben Evans wrote: > In his own, unique way, Dave seems to have kindly raised the issue of > what the age rating for this list should be. > > Personally, as a fair few people seem to be posting from work addresses, > I'd vote for making the list PG-rated, so as not to trip any employers > naughty words filters? > > What do the rest of you chickens think? I don't like diet anything, including diet Cantrell (or Cantrell lite or whatever). This raises a good question, though. What is the attitude of financial industries towards employee use of email addresses on external lists and for marginally work-related lists? John (posting not from work) Disclaimer: I am The Cantrell's (somewhat delinquent) stalker on London.PM. Will follow people for beer. From adrian.scottow at gmail.com Sat Sep 9 02:05:01 2006 From: adrian.scottow at gmail.com (Adrian Scottow) Date: Sat, 9 Sep 2006 10:05:01 +0100 Subject: [Banking-pm] Introduction: Adrian Scottow Message-ID: <1f450b510609090205m239694b0h21ad625dd4667ea6@mail.gmail.com> Hello, I'm Adrian Scottow - I also work for a major investment bank in London in their Equities division. I have been doing perl for about 5 years now. I use perl mainly for ETL to construct datamarts and do database reporting to external and internal clients. Bits and bobs of more interesting stuff from time to time as well. I seem to be doing less perl development recently and more database/SQL/data analysis. I am almost definitely going to try to do some more perl in the future - because I used to enjoy it lots. Currently I am vaguely irratated with myself for missing YAPC in my home town of Brum - I haven't seen many reports but it sounded like fun. Cheers, Adrian -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.pm.org/pipermail/banking-pm/attachments/20060909/2d5c9124/attachment.html From alex at owal.co.uk Sat Sep 9 02:20:26 2006 From: alex at owal.co.uk (Alex McLintock) Date: Sat, 09 Sep 2006 10:20:26 +0100 Subject: [Banking-pm] Any newbies? In-Reply-To: <45019205.2010206@cantrell.org.uk> References: <46359.193.26.4.35.1157729787.squirrel@sflink.net> <4501916D.2000006@cantrell.org.uk> <45019205.2010206@cantrell.org.uk> Message-ID: <4502875A.3050400@owal.co.uk> David Cantrell wrote: [a swearword] (with list admin hat on) I am reluctant to start moderating this list - it would be too time consuming but since it is primarily about work life then its content should be safe for work I dont really want to have to create rules to specify exactly what that means but I dont think it includes swearing unprovoked. David, please refrain from swearing on this list. Thanks. (taking off list admin hat) I just dont see what David is doing here posting that apart from trolling. He made the same point on London.pm which I was amused at. After all I find a lot of London.pm quite obnoxious and wouldnt give them employment. It seems quite funny to me that David was complaining about people's bad behavior whilst himself exhibiting bad behavior. However something tells me that he wasn't trying to be funny. His point is a valid one - even if he made it in a rude way. The banking world is stressful and you get to work with a lot of people who make three times as much as you do - and they are often full of themselves. This is a perfectly acceptable topic of conversation for Banking.pm From dave at dave.org.uk Sat Sep 9 03:41:46 2006 From: dave at dave.org.uk (Dave Cross) Date: Sat, 09 Sep 2006 11:41:46 +0100 Subject: [Banking-pm] Introduction: Adrian Scottow In-Reply-To: <1f450b510609090205m239694b0h21ad625dd4667ea6@mail.gmail.com> References: <1f450b510609090205m239694b0h21ad625dd4667ea6@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <45029A6A.7080802@dave.org.uk> Adrian Scottow wrote: > I have been doing perl for about 5 years now. Wow. Was it really that long ago! > Currently I am vaguely irratated with myself for missing YAPC in my home > town of Brum - I haven't seen many reports but it sounded like fun. See http://wiki.birmingham2006.com/WikiPlan/wiki.pl?Blogs for various reports and http://wiki.birmingham2006.com/WikiPlan/wiki.pl?ConferencePhotos for photos. A good time was had by all as far as I can tell. Dave... From dwilson at unixdaemon.net Sat Sep 9 03:51:19 2006 From: dwilson at unixdaemon.net (Dean Wilson) Date: Sat, 9 Sep 2006 11:51:19 +0100 Subject: [Banking-pm] Any newbies? In-Reply-To: <46359.193.26.4.35.1157729787.squirrel@sflink.net> References: <46359.193.26.4.35.1157729787.squirrel@sflink.net> Message-ID: <20060909105119.GA3394@unixdaemon.net> On Fri, Sep 08, 2006 at 04:36:27PM +0100, alex at owal.co.uk wrote: > Have we persuaded anybody to join the list who doesnt work in finance - > but is thinking about it? Yep. As long as you all sound happy working in it anyway :) I'm Dean Wilson, I'm London born and based and I'm here to see what's happening in the banking world these days. The short version of my employment history: I spent nearly two and a half years employed at JPMorgan, moving from back office, to middle office to trade support before I was persuaded to go and do web stuff in 2000; my timing was less than ideal :) My progression from VBA to perl happened at the same time and I've not been able to kick the language since. I did a couple of startups as a perl developer (Oven, which went bang, and WebPerform which we sold) before switching over to doing Unix/Linux system administration. I spent an amazingly frustrating year as sysadmin at a small (and shrinking) financial data provider I won't name and wouldn't use before heading over to a Bupa company where I picked up chunks of ISO17799 and BS7799 and lost most of my HPUX skills due to lack of use. I'm currently working at an orange loving Canon owned company as a system admin and using perl to write monitoring and maintance tools. Outside of work I organise a number of technical events in London and help out a handful of OpenSource / Free software groups. In addition to finding out what banks actually use these days I'd like to regain some basic domain knowledge, pointers to decent books would be appreciated. I'm also going to try and pick Nik Claytons brains on his system baseline testing :) Dean -- Dean Wilson http://www.unixdaemon.net Profanity is the one language all programmers understand --- Anon From ns7d-l3x0 at xemaps.com Mon Sep 11 01:57:02 2006 From: ns7d-l3x0 at xemaps.com (IvorW) Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2006 04:57:02 -0400 Subject: [Banking-pm] Introducing myself Message-ID: As everyone's saying "Hello" on this list, here's a quick bio. I've been working in the Financial Services sector continuously from May 1997. Before this I have worked in IT for retail, manufacturing and distribution, the National Health Service, book publishing, and market research. >From May 1997, I have worked for a software house and data vendor, two investment banks, an exchange and a clearing house. I'm currently employed by Sopra Newell & Budge, an international consultancy headquartered in France. I'm currently at LCH.Clearnet (London Clearing House), where I have been from February 2003. I have introduced much Perl to LCH, including the use of CPAN modules. I'm using Perl in my role as "Application Support", for log file analysis and monitoring, GUI front ends (Tk), Sybase data access (yes, I have managed to get Class::DBI and Sybase to work together), SWIFT data munging and test automation. The application I am looking after is written in C++, but Perl has proved very useful in supplying industrial strength glue and duct tape. Those in london.pm will know me, as will those who attend YAPC::EU. I tend to hang out on irc as ivorw, and my PAUSE ID is IVORW. On Perlmonks, I am known as rinceWind. I am using a DEA to subscribe and post to this list. Note that this means that any replies I post from work will be missing In-reply-to headers. This is because of the horrendous disclaimers that get added if I use a normal email client. Ivor Williams. From nik at ngo.org.uk Wed Sep 13 04:24:51 2006 From: nik at ngo.org.uk (Nik Clayton) Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2006 12:24:51 +0100 Subject: [Banking-pm] Another Introduction In-Reply-To: <8968.193.26.4.35.1157731259.squirrel@sflink.net> References: <20060908163226.jbunoqi73ksgkk0s@webmail.mag-sol.com> <8968.193.26.4.35.1157731259.squirrel@sflink.net> Message-ID: <4507EA83.2080501@ngo.org.uk> alex at owal.co.uk wrote: >> Here's an important question - is banking.pm planning to have any >> meetings? >> >> Dave... > > > That is of course a question for the members - if they turn up then there > will be a meeting. What about the occasional lunch time meeting? Evening meetings tend to be a hassle (for me at least), due to a thousand and one other commitments, most of them involving step-children. Lunch time meetings might take less effort to organise, and might be easier for people to attend (?) N From alex at owal.co.uk Wed Sep 13 04:58:35 2006 From: alex at owal.co.uk (alex at owal.co.uk) Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2006 12:58:35 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Banking-pm] Another Introduction In-Reply-To: <4507EA83.2080501@ngo.org.uk> References: <20060908163226.jbunoqi73ksgkk0s@webmail.mag-sol.com> <8968.193.26.4.35.1157731259.squirrel@sflink.net> <4507EA83.2080501@ngo.org.uk> Message-ID: <44278.193.26.4.35.1158148715.squirrel@sflink.net> Nick wrote: > What about the occasional lunch time meeting? Evening meetings tend to > be a hassle (for me at least), due to a thousand and one other > commitments, Not a bad suggestion actually. I'd propose meeting outside Ekachai for noodles/lunch. No need to book, but they do get busy some days. Ekachai is near to Liverpool Street Station in the old Metropolitan Arcade. Would that do? Or whilst it is still summertime we could do a picnic on the Aviva Plaza, or Finsbury Circus, or Spittlefields market. Can someone else organise it though? (Of course anyone working in Docklands wouldnt be able to make it over here for lunch, or vice versa) From david at cantrell.org.uk Thu Sep 14 09:04:41 2006 From: david at cantrell.org.uk (David Cantrell) Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2006 17:04:41 +0100 Subject: [Banking-pm] Any newbies? In-Reply-To: <4502875A.3050400@owal.co.uk> References: <46359.193.26.4.35.1157729787.squirrel@sflink.net> <4501916D.2000006@cantrell.org.uk> <45019205.2010206@cantrell.org.uk> <4502875A.3050400@owal.co.uk> Message-ID: <20060914160437.GA5525@bytemark.barnyard.co.uk> On Sat, Sep 09, 2006 at 10:20:26AM +0100, Alex McLintock wrote: > David Cantrell wrote: > > [a swearword] > (with list admin hat on) > David, please refrain from swearing on this list. Thanks. I'll try to remember. > (taking off list admin hat) > I just dont see what David is doing here posting that apart from > trolling. Forgive me, but I thought that us non-banking types were asked to pipe up and introduce ourselves. So I did. And I had the crazy notion that people might be interested to know why non-banking people are lurking on the list. > He made the same point on London.pm which I was amused at. Indeed I did make the same point there. This, however, is not London.pm, and while the memberships clearly intersect, this is not a mere subset of london.pm. Hence I repeated myself for the benefit of notlondoners. > It seems quite funny to me that David was complaining > about people's bad behavior whilst himself exhibiting bad behavior. In my environment, referring to someone in a coarse and vulgar way when they are a *most* unpleasant person is not bad behaviour, it's just efficient. Crude, vulgar language is, I am certain, used "around the watercooler" every day by staff in every significant workplace including banks. That it is considered appropriate there but not in a professional (but outside work) mailing list is a useful data point about at least some workplaces. Indeed, I'm on other lists (not perly ones) which have people from banks, insurers, government departments, telcos, and the like, grumbling "rudely" about their colleagues and bosses. > His point is a valid one - even if he made it in a rude way. I saw nothing rude. However, as it appears that some people do have genuine concerns about it I'll try to use inefficient circumlocutions in the unlikely event that I post here again. -- David Cantrell | A machine for turning tea into grumpiness From leif.eriksen at hpa.com.au Thu Sep 14 18:50:24 2006 From: leif.eriksen at hpa.com.au (leif.eriksen at hpa.com.au) Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2006 11:50:24 +1000 Subject: [Banking-pm] Any newbies? Message-ID: Hi Banker-boffins, I too am not in the banking/finance industry, but I have worked on a number of financial systems, both front-end (related to the compnay I was working for) and back-end (communicating with other financial systems for settlement etc). I would love to get into the financial side of this industry. Currently I am in the volume print industry, and if you want to know more about me, have a look at my entry in perl.net.au. http://perl.net.au/wiki/User:Leriksen My short-term motivation is to get a job for a year or two in London, which feeds into my long-term motivation of then returning to an Australian bank and continuing from there. So there! Leif -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.405 / Virus Database: 268.12.3/447 - Release Date: 13/09/2006 ********************************************************************** IMPORTANT The contents of this e-mail and its attachments are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you received this e-mail in error, please notify the HPA Postmaster, postmaster at hpa.com.au, then delete the e-mail. This footnote also confirms that this e-mail message has been swept for the presence of computer viruses by Ironport. Before opening or using any attachments, check them for viruses and defects. Our liability is limited to resupplying any affected attachments. HPA collects personal information to provide and market our services. For more information about use, disclosure and access see our Privacy Policy at www.hpa.com.au ********************************************************************** From alex at owal.co.uk Fri Sep 15 02:32:19 2006 From: alex at owal.co.uk (alex at owal.co.uk) Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2006 10:32:19 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Banking-pm] Any newbies? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <10269.193.26.4.35.1158312739.squirrel@sflink.net> > My short-term motivation is to get a job for a year or two in London, > which feeds into my long-term motivation of then returning to an > Australian bank and continuing from there. Hello Leif, Is there any reason why you dont want to skip the London stage and just go work for a bank in Australia? What is your financial knowledge like? Do you know what a bond is? and interest rate swap? Do you know the difference between Market and Credit Risk? Do you know what a trading system is? Do you know what the difference between front, middle, and back office is? Can anyone else add some more questions? From alex at owal.co.uk Fri Sep 15 02:45:07 2006 From: alex at owal.co.uk (alex at owal.co.uk) Date: Fri, 15 Sep 2006 10:45:07 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Banking-pm] Banking.pm Website? Message-ID: <17957.193.26.4.35.1158313507.squirrel@sflink.net> Do we want a website? I'm thinking that a wiki would be best (so long as it is versioned so that we can remove spam without too much trouble.) I can ask for one using the pm.org hardware, or I can install MediaWiki on my own hardware. (I know there are perl wiki's but I like MediaWiki). Does anyone care? Any opinions? Any fancy css guru's want to come up with a design? Alex From leif.eriksen at hpa.com.au Sun Sep 17 18:28:25 2006 From: leif.eriksen at hpa.com.au (leif.eriksen at hpa.com.au) Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2006 11:28:25 +1000 Subject: [Banking-pm] Any newbies? Message-ID: Yo Alex, My desire to go to England is twofold - 1. London is one of the 2 great financial hubs in the world. The best people are there. To succeed you need to surround yourself with the best people. I've been to NY and couldn't stand it. I've been to London and loved it. So having made a plan to target my skills towards the financial world, London seems the best place to be. 2. English history fascinates me - and so to be there and explore it in-situ is incredibly exciting to me. My financial knowledge is a little better than average - I studied accounting and finance at school, but did not progress that at Uni - computers were so much more interesting. But I seem (until very recently) to have done lots with financial systems (especially reporting and transaction flows) ever since I graduated over 10 years ago. I know the answer to your last two questions (though I'm guessing these don?t have formal rigid definitions) - and I don?t know the first two, which probably do have formal answers. So there's work for me to do - the list is working beautifully. L -----Original Message----- From: alex at owal.co.uk [mailto:alex at owal.co.uk] Sent: Friday, 15 September 2006 7:32 PM To: banking-pm at pm.org Subject: Re: [Banking-pm] Any newbies? > My short-term motivation is to get a job for a year or two in London, > which feeds into my long-term motivation of then returning to an > Australian bank and continuing from there. Hello Leif, Is there any reason why you dont want to skip the London stage and just go work for a bank in Australia? What is your financial knowledge like? Do you know what a bond is? and interest rate swap? Do you know the difference between Market and Credit Risk? Do you know what a trading system is? Do you know what the difference between front, middle, and back office is? Can anyone else add some more questions? _______________________________________________ Banking-pm mailing list Banking-pm at pm.org http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/banking-pm -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.405 / Virus Database: 268.12.3/447 - Release Date: 13/09/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.405 / Virus Database: 268.12.4/449 - Release Date: 15/09/2006 ********************************************************************** IMPORTANT The contents of this e-mail and its attachments are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you received this e-mail in error, please notify the HPA Postmaster, postmaster at hpa.com.au, then delete the e-mail. This footnote also confirms that this e-mail message has been swept for the presence of computer viruses by Ironport. Before opening or using any attachments, check them for viruses and defects. Our liability is limited to resupplying any affected attachments. HPA collects personal information to provide and market our services. For more information about use, disclosure and access see our Privacy Policy at www.hpa.com.au ********************************************************************** From nik at ngo.org.uk Mon Sep 18 04:07:55 2006 From: nik at ngo.org.uk (Nik Clayton) Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2006 12:07:55 +0100 Subject: [Banking-pm] Another Introduction In-Reply-To: <44278.193.26.4.35.1158148715.squirrel@sflink.net> References: <20060908163226.jbunoqi73ksgkk0s@webmail.mag-sol.com> <8968.193.26.4.35.1157731259.squirrel@sflink.net> <4507EA83.2080501@ngo.org.uk> <44278.193.26.4.35.1158148715.squirrel@sflink.net> Message-ID: <450E7E0B.9060001@ngo.org.uk> > Nik wrote: >> What about the occasional lunch time meeting? Evening meetings tend to >> be a hassle (for me at least), due to a thousand and one other >> commitments, OK. I'm going to be over at JP Morgan's offices at Victoria Embankment on Thursday morning for the UK Subversion user group meeting. Does anybody fancy getting together for lunch afterwards? The meeting's not scheduled to finish until 2pm, so it would be a late lunch... N