Native XML databases - Making Sense of NoSQL - page 122

elements needed to more precisely describe the derivative. Downstream analy-
sis and reporting became easier to manage and less error prone.
 Better risk management —New reporting capabilities aggregated the bank's posi-
tion in real time, and provided an instant, accurate view of exposure to certain
risk aspects such as counter-parties, currencies, or geographies.
 Lower operational costs —The elimination of processing errors associated with
multiple operational stores containing conflicting data reduced cost per trade;
the reduction of database administrators needed from 10 to 1 lowered human
resource expense; mechanisms that trigger all post-trade processing workflows
from a single source instead of 20 databases increased operational efficiencies;
and the ability to query the content of each individual derivative lowered
reporting costs. With its new infrastructure, the bank didn't need to add
resources to meet regulators' escalating demands for more transparency and
increased stress-testing frequency.

In addition to the more tangible benefits of the new system, the bank was able to
bring new products to market faster and perform more detailed quality checks on
diverse data. As a result of the new-found confidence in the data quality and accuracy,
the solution was adopted by other parts of the bank.

5.7.4 Project results

The new MarkLogic system allowed the bank to cut the costs of building and main-
taining an operational data store for complex derivatives. In addition, the bank
became more responsive to the needs of the organization when new derivatives
needed to be added. Derivative contracts are now kept in a semantically precise and
flexible XML format while maintaining high data integrity, even as the format moves
into remote reporting and workflow systems. These changes had a positive impact on
the entire lifecycle of derivative contract management.

5.8 Summary

If you talk with people who've been using native XML databases for several years, they
tell you they're happy with these systems, and express their reluctance to return to
RDBMS s. Their primary reason for liking native XML systems isn't centered around
performance issues, although there are commercial native XML databases such as
MarkLogic that store petabtyes of information. Their primary reason is related to
increased developer productivity and the ability for nonprogrammers to be able to
participate in the development process.
Seasoned software developers have exposure to good training and they frequently
use tools customized to the XML development process. They have large libraries of
XQuery code that can quickly be customized to create new applications in a short
period of time. The ability to quickly create new applications shortens development
cycles and helps new products make tight time-to-market deadlines.