OpenTOMS - Open Trade Order Management System

In the current financial software sector, there is a distinct lack of open source offerings. The trade order management software sector is currently dominated by the likes of Tradar, LineData, Charles River, etc. I wanted to create an open source alternative to these systems. One that would match the aspirations of the vast majority of young investment start-ups.

The OpenTOMS system is written in PHP and uses the CakePHP MVC framework. This will hopefully allow for a broad spectrum of contributors to the project.

We encourage you to participate in this project and to help make it the first and best open source tool for trade and order management.

Setting Up OpenTOMS on your computer

The following instructions help you to get the system up and running quickly on your computer. The target platform is LAMP so if you are already starting out with such a system, then you can skip to step 1 now. Otherwise, please install the LAMP components on your development platform.

For Linux users, install apache2, mysql-server and php5 from your distro repositories. You will also need libapache2-mod-php5 and php5-mysql.

For Windows users you can download WAMP from http://www.wampserver.com/

1. Put the OpenTOMS source somewhere onto your target system.

2. In MySQL create a database, call it anything you want, e.g. opentomsdb.

3. Set up the database schema by using the scripts in the database_setup folder as follows:

   mysql -u [username] -p [password] [database-name] < database_schema

   Optionally, I recommend you populate the tables with some sample data as follows:

   mysql -u [username] -p [password] [database-name] < database_data

4. Set Apache to point to the app/webroot folder.

   Below is a cut out from the /etc/apache2/sites-available/default file.

   DocumentRoot /home/jt/Projects/OpenTOMS/app/webroot/
   <Directory />
              	Options FollowSymLinks
              	AllowOverride All
   	</Directory>
   	<Directory /home/jt/Projects/OpenTOMS/app/webroot/>
           	Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
           	AllowOverride All
           	Order allow,deny
           	allow from all
   	</Directory>
   

5. In the /app/config/database.php file, put in the details for the database that you created in step 2 above so that the system can locate its database. You might want to run the line below before changing this file so that you don't commit your changes:

   git update-index --assume-unchanged database.php

6. Things to make sure that it will all work.

   Ensure that you set AllowOverride All for the DocumentRoot

   Ensure that Mod_Rewrite is enabled in Apache2. This will require an Apache restart.

   Ensure that the directories have the proper permissions so that the www-data (default Apache user) can read the files. Also important that www-data can browse all folders (set the x on the folders)

   Ensure that the /app/tmp/cache folder and all its subfolders are chmod'ed 777.

7. CakePHP uses an ACL system to control access to pages. The ACL parameters are stored in the aros, acos and aros_acos tables in the database. These tables can be initialised by running the following two pages from your browser. I'm assuming you have set up Apache according to the above steps so that http://localhost is pointing to the root of the project source folder.

   http://localhost/groups/build_acl

   http://localhost/users/initDB

   The first of the two pages above must be run again every time you add a new page or element to the project!

   The second page above also creates the first login, an administrator login with username of admin and no password.

8. Login in the system using the admin user (no password) set up in step 7 above and go to the Fund page (under Standing Data menu). Add a new fund and call it whatever you like. Then go the Trader page also under Standing menu and add a new trader calling him/her whatever you like. You are now ready to start adding trades and running valuation reports.

   Any problems, please email me John at jt@lprc.co.uk or catch me on Skype (jtam123) and I will be very happy to help you!