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bank of Jamaica

Bank of Jamaica is the National Bank of Jamaica. We help connect its operations to the Internet, and interconnect it with banks throughout the world. The National Bank activities are described: www.boj.org.jm.

Bank of Jamaica is the National Bank of Jamaica, responsible for currency, bonds, and foreign exchange transactions with other banks.

The Challenge

The Jamaican National Bank needed to electronically exchange information with other commercial banks and foreign exchange offices via the Internet. The two primary aims of this global application were to streamline 1) the auction process, and, 2) the same day exchange rate quotations of foreign currencies. A very important technological request of our client was a strong encryption technique to guarantee safe data exchange via the Internet.

The Solution

In cooperation with Intrashare Systems Inc., an American company, Anasoft developed an application to enable the Bank of Jamaica to communicate digitally in all the requested ways:

- Internet support to primary and secondary treasury market auctions
- Safe data transfer and simple application control
- Real-time quotes of domestic currency
- Issue government obligations
- Trade and intervene on the foreign exchange market
- Review documentation of companies, including authorized exchange offices and foreign exchange dealers
- Publish bank information to various institutions and the media
- Connect with the existing bank system network
- Process additional off-line data recording by bank employees
- Interface with foreign exchange systems
- Report sales of foreign exchange offices

The result of this development is that the National Bank of Jamaica handles its currency functions through a technologically advanced communication application, live and on-line.

Technology

In realizing this project, two main issues were the encryption needs and the complexity of the application. Due to the encryption options, and considering availability (as some ISPs may be down at critical times) we rejected a web application based on an Internet Browser and chose a multi-tier application including the following components:

1. Client – Power Builder
2. Application server – Power Builder
3. Database servers – Sybase Adaptive Server Anywhere and MS SQL server 7.0

The communication of the client and server runs via Internet. The input forms are sent directly from the application server to the client. To reduce the amount of data transferred this communication uses compression and consequent encryption using a 1024 bit key, which changes with every communication. To compare the technical parameters of an Internet browser, there are a maximum of 128 bit keys used currently, and this encryption is considered sufficient. The client connection to the server requires only the IP address and the port number of the application server. The application server is connected to two database servers at the same time. One contains the application data, the other one is the server of a treasury system. The first is located in front of the firewall, the second is in a DMZ zone.

After many years of useful life, this software is being converted to an Oracle platform. The project is in final testing stages and is expected to go live early next year. The DBMS used is the Oracle 10.g database. We are using the Oracle Application Server and Oracle Java tools. After the conversion additional enhancements are contemplated.