Application Design For Financial Software?

[alvin567]

Hey.There is this jobs that I am offered as a student.

It says I am required to load existing data from excel spreadsheet into program and load into the relational database.It also requires me to design the relational database.It is more towards finanical data like stocks and bonds and can you suggest what are the tools softwares and language that I am supposed to use.

 

Ok the requirements are quite vague,because I haven't mentioned that I wasn't offered the job yet.

 

So should I use MSSQL or ms access which one is better?

[trq]

Neither would be my choice. Is this a MS oriented workplace?

[alvin567]

no it is free for you to choose what is needed,

I was thinking about doing the application using C++

does C++ supports autocomplete and sorting using datagrid?

Or how about a web based systems?

[thehippy]

Data integrity is at the core of design for critical application architecture.  Data loss is simply unacceptable.  As such a critical application needs to be highly testable to certify the integrity of the system handling the data.  The system for storing the data (RDBMS) must be highly tested and have the features for authenticating the integrity of the data.  Also, though I'm not positive you should have to follow the International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS) in order to have your application be insurable.  There is no way I'd hand this off to a student to design if it is a such an application.  On the the other hand if I'm looking at this a bit too deeply, if you're to design a stock/bond monitor, while the data integrity is important its probably something a grad should be able to do.

 

As for what to use, a RDBMS that supports ACID, Data Integrity (Triggers, Constraints, Foreign Keys, etc), Transactions is essential. Oh look I found a >list<.  I won't go out of my way to support one or another, but know as a developer you won't have to buy an expensive license to develop the application, there is a free version nearly all the big guys, Oracle with their Oracle Database Express, Microsoft with SQL Server Express, IBM with DB2 Express and so on.  Also, there is Postgres, Ingres and others in the FOSS world without any end costs other than learning them.

 

RDBMS were made to, well most are made and excel at handling financial datasets, most of the project should be done with the RDBMS, your application should largely just be a way to view the data, manipulation should happen at the database, imports should happen at the database, calculations should happen at the database and so on.  The front end is nearly irrelevant and up to choice, lots of enterprises have used web-front-ends for a good long time now and that may be an avenue for you, but most likely the decision will be the preference of the client/employer.