Working with XMon Tags: What is data being used for?
XMon creates an abstraction layer between data vendors, internal systems, end-users and applications. This is achieved through modeling ‘Data Sources’ (vendor accounts) and ‘Data Connectors’ (internal consumers of data) and provides visibility onto which system, end-user or application is pulling down data. The abstraction layer allows for granular flow control and accurate and fair cost allocation reports to be created quickly and easily.
Internal consumers can request and download data for different reasons from within the same application. For example, data may be downloaded from a portfolio management system for the following reasons:
- Building the instrument universe
- Obtaining data required to build a given report
- Updating data intraday
- Getting closing prices
And much more.
These ‘data download requests’ may be done through manual interaction or through automated batch jobs and in addition to this, multiple users may be logging on to the same back end system or application, effectively ‘masking’ the real consumer and purpose of the data.
Where Data Connectors in XMon provide visibility onto the application pulling down data, XMon Tags provide visibility onto why this data is being pulled down.
How to define and use tags in XMon
Tags are defined in XMon in the SETTINGS > TAGS menu.
The screenshot below shows two tags defined: ‘JOBNAME’ which will be used to identify batch jobs requesting data and ‘USERNAME’ which will be used to identify individual users pulling down data.
Once tags are defined in XMon, they can be added to the request file itself in the form of a comment. Below is a sample Bloomberg Data License SFTP request file with an embedded tag:
When a request containing a defined tag is sent to XMon, it is visible immediately as a neatly defined column in the dashboard where it can be filtered on and sorted:
Tags are applied across applications, so for example, if a job requires data to be pulled down from different applications or across different teams, they can share the same tag and costs will be automatically aggregated.
Tags are also available in XMon reports for BI and cost allocation purposes (e.g. what is the data cost for BA Research ?), and export charts like the one below:
Tags are supported for Bloomberg and Reuters and can be added in SFTP and WebAPI type requests.
Get in touch for more information about XMon Tags and how they can be used to provide fine grained visibility on data flows and costs within your enterprise.