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Pluto

Pluto. Building a large financial system in PERL. What is Pluto?. Life insurance system Keeps track of mutual funds Handles 5 200 000 accounts Handled EUR 7 000 000 000 Process all accounts in 12 hours Written in Perl. What is PPM?. Each person has a personal account

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Pluto

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  1. Pluto Building a large financial system in PERL

  2. What is Pluto? • Life insurance system • Keeps track of mutual funds • Handles 5 200 000 accounts • Handled EUR 7 000 000 000 • Process all accounts in 12 hours • Written in Perl

  3. What is PPM? • Each person has a personal account • Can select 5 funds • Can switch any time • Can get pension paid when 61

  4. History • PPM had a EUR 10 000 000 contract to buy a system from CSC • CSC failed to deliver on time • We were asked to deliver a 2nd system • Started Novemeber-99 delivery 16th of March 2000

  5. Challenges? • Lots of accounts • Lots of money • Lots of media focus • Must be right • Short time

  6. Advantages • Business specs: Read the law and Interfaces • Language? • Hardware? • Database? • We don’t care! We need a system!

  7. Why Perl? • Visual Basic • C/C++ • C# • Java • 4GL

  8. Advantages with Perl • Quick to develop • Robust • No compiling • Easy to get started • Good parsing features • Works well with Oracle • Performance...

  9. But won’t Perl be slow... • Tests showed that about 10% of the execution time is spent in Perl and 90% in Oracle and calls to Oracle. • RegExp and hashes makes for efficient algorithms • Quick to program leaves time to optimize algorithms

  10. Platform • Linux on HP Hardware • Oracle 8i • CVS • Production Platform: HP-UX/Linux

  11. Architecture • Perl • DBI/DBD • Oracle • No N-tier complexity

  12. Project Team • Project lead • Developers (5-7) • Actuarial (2) • Test (2) • Legal specialist (1) • Accountant (1)

  13. Priorities • No errors! • No erroneous data in database • Trace all transactions • High performance • Flexibility and functional depth

  14. Peer Reviews • Code written by one developer • Code tested by author • Author is responsible that code works • Checked by a second developer

  15. Code should be • Easy to understand • Correct • Efficient • Consistent

  16. Challenges • Large database (30 GB) • Large numbers and exact calculations • Handle crashes • Trace transactions • Lots of combinations • No errors

  17. Large database • Tables with 200 000 000 records • Full table scan takes 15 minutes • Larger than RAM • Read person  Physical read  10ms • One processing takes about four reads • Gives 25 pps which is too slow • Index Organized Tables

  18. Large numbers • Amounts with 2 decimals • Fund quantities with 6 decimals • Value can be up to 50 000 000 000 • Need 10+6 decimals, i.e. double is not enough • BigInt/BigFloat too slow (1000 calc/s) • Oracle too slow (1000 calc/s) • Scaled integers

  19. Crashes happen • Power failure (None so far) • OS/Hardware crashes (Some found) • Disc crashes (None so far) • Oracle bugs (There are some) • Perl bugs (None so far) • Our bugs (Some found)

  20. How to handle • Use Oracle transactions with great care • Can not have one transaction per execution • Keep track of which line we have read • Always think of crashes • Have not restored from backup yet...

  21. Trace transaction • Never update (almost) • Insert new record • Insert transactions

  22. Murphy's law confirmed • If there is one chance in a million that it will happen… • it happens five times! • Corrections... (we had five the first day) • And corrections of corrections...

  23. And then... • CSC was late • Could not deliver all functionality • PPM Decided to use Pluto • But had to pay CSC EUR 15 000 000 • They might get a new chance in Denmark...

  24. Advantages with Perl • Portable • No compiling • Easy to do version handling • Stable • Easy to learn • (Cost is not a major advantage)

  25. Proven • Perl is stable • Perl code can be maintained (if used carefully) • Perl and Oracle Interfaces well • Perl systems can be developed quickly • Perl can be used to build large and complex systems

  26. Questions?

  27. Questions?

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