Evolution of OFX to facilitate online financial services

Presented by:

Harsh Jha, Sandeep

University of Minnesota

Class Topics: XML, Schema integration in Distributed DBMS

Sources:

● Wikipedia

● OFX Official Site (http://www.ofx.net)

● taxOpen Financial Exchange 2.0 Earning Broad Industry Support (January 03, 2001)

● Fundamentals of Database Systems (Chap. 12), Elmasri et al.

● Harness the power of XML to Open Financial Exchange files, Colin Beckingham (March 17, 2009)

OFX Introduction

CUSTOMERS

ConsumersFamilies

Tax PayersSmall Businesses

INSTITUTIONS

Financial InstitutionsFinancial Advisors

Government AgenciesMerchants and Businesses

Information ProvidersTransaction Processors

• OFX is a framework for exchanging data.

• Employs schema integration.

Well-formed and valid XML

Well Formed:● Has XML declaration

Indicates version of XML being used as well as any other relevant attributes

● Every element must matching pair of start and end tags Within start and end tags of parent element

Valid XML:● Must be well-formed

● Follows a schema

Example of an OFX fileHeader:OFXHEADER:100DATA:OFXSGMLVERSION:102SECURITY:NONEENCODING:USASCIICHARSET:1252COMPRESSION:NONEOLDFILEUID:NONENEWFILEUID:NONE Body:<OFX>  <SIGNONMSGSRSV1>    …  </SIGNONMSGSRSV1>  <BANKMSGSRSV1>    …          <STMTTRN>            <TRNTYPE>PAYMENT            <DTPOSTED>20050824080000            <TRNAMT>-80.32            <FITID>219378            <CHECKNUM>1044            <NAME>FrogKick Scuba Gear          </STMTTRN>    …  </BANKMSGSRSV1></OFX>

Well Formed XML?

Valid XML?

XML-ized OFX versionHeader:<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ASCII"?><?OFX OFXHEADER="200" VERSION="211" SECURITY="NONE" OLDFILEUID="NONE" NEWFILEUID="NONE"?> Body:<OFX> <SIGNONMSGSRSV1>    … </SIGNONMSGSRSV1> <BANKMSGSRSV1>    …          <STMTTRN>            <TRNTYPE>POS</TRNTYPE>            <DTPOSTED>20050824080000</DTPOSTED>            <TRNAMT>-80</TRNAMT>            <FITID>219378</FITID>            <NAME>FrogKick Scuba Gear</NAME>          </STMTTRN>    … </BANKMSGSRSV1> <CREDITCARDMSGSRSV1>    … </CREDITCARDMSGSRSV1></OFX>

Parse OFX XML files (an example):

<?php// test ofx$xmlstr = file_get_contents('sample.xml');$xml = new SimpleXMLElement($xmlstr);echo $xml->BANKMSGSRSV1->STMTTRNRS->STMTRS->TRNAMT."\n";?>

Understanding OFX

● Created on January 16, 1997 by Microsoft, Intuit and CheckFree.

● Convergence of their respective payment protocols.

● Streamlines processes of financial institutions.

● Full data synchronization and complete error recovery.

● Over 5500 financial institutions use it.

Impacts/Applications of OFX

● Tax Softwares

● E-bill pay

● Personal Financial Management Softwares

● Financial software development

● Interbank/Intrabank funds transfer

Thanks!

Questions?