"With the rich functions provided by Pervasive.SQL™, the EC Stock Trade System provides small and mid-sized brokerage firms with a cost-efficient, comprehensive, secured Internet securities trading system, which accompanies other value-added services and financial information. The whole system is very stable, highly reliable, flexible and user-friendly." - Murphy Sit, Marketing Manager, eFinance28 Ltd

About eFinance28 Limited
eFinance28 Ltd., established in 1990 in Hong Kong, is a leading IT specialist and software consultant in the stock trading industry. The company has a strong management team consisting of experts in the financial sector, including equities, foreign exchange and precious metal trading specialists.

The company also provides processing application systems and trading platforms to corporate banks and financial institutions, and designs software systems to support the finance industry in Hong Kong. Their consultants are relied upon to handle multiple financial features such as account management, real-time quotes, dealing room systems, independent online trading, automatic confirmation, risk management and account settlements.

Business Challenge
Launched in 2001, AMS/3 (the third generation of eFinance28's Automatic Order Matching and Executive System application), is an Internet-based system creating an electronic trading environment for the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. AMS/3 enables investors to cover the stock market in different time zones and geographical boundaries by using multiple trading facilities.

Many larger brokerage firms have implemented their own Internet securities trading systems to attract investors. This development poses a threat to the existence of small and mid-sized brokerage firms that are now trying to improve their overall competitiveness by cutting costs and fees, and providing investors with more value-added services.

Together with Poly-Asia e-Technology, a local leading software agent in Hong Kong, eFinance 28 needed to develop a state-of-the-art, cost-efficient system to meet the needs of small to mid-sized brokerage firms while lowering operating costs and increasing market share.

Pervasive Solution
eFinance28 selected Pervasive.SQL to power the EC Stock Trade System, its own cost-effective system designed for small and mid-sized brokers. With its efficient data-management features, Pervasive.SQL enables a swift response for equity trading and checking, order taking and many other benefits.

Pervasive.SQL increases the speed at which customers can access data by up to 10 times, allowing them to exploit the full potential of using the latest hardware equipped with the fastest processors available. A self-tuning engine ensures that the database runs virtually maintenance-free.

With the support of Pervasive.SQL, the EC Stock Trade System is highly reliable and known for strong overall performance, according to Murphy Sit, marketing manager, eFinance28.

Bottom Line
The Pervasive.SQL provided the following benefits to eFinance28 and its customers:

• Cross-platform support: Pervasive.SQL provides support for multiple environments and platforms, allowing the EC Stock Trade System to deploy against any engine without rewriting or recompiling the application.
• Simplified and faster data management: Pervasive.SQL, with the Pervasive System Analyzer, is self-tuning and auto-configuring, so systems maintenance is effortless, while multiple data streams are easily handled.
• Wide range of data access methods: Pervasive.SQL allows multiple data access methods within the same application, providing the EC Stock Trade system with unrivaled speed, control, power, high-performance and unlimited flexibility.

About Pervasive Software®
Pervasive Software is a leading global data-management company powering the success of application developers by providing solutions that deliver the industry's best combination of performance, reliability and low administration costs. Pervasive's strength is evidenced by the size and diversity of its customer base, serving tens of thousands of customers with hundreds of thousands of end-users in nearly every vertical market around the world. Founded in 1994, Pervasive sells its products into more than 150 countries and is based in Austin, Texas, with offices in Europe.