I decided to write on this topic, as I work in one of the largest Bank in Australia and I realized that providing a banking solution is very complex. As the technology is growing so rapidly, that one can't afford to provide a complete solution using a finite set of technologies. And these days, its a habit of Big software companies that they sell all their available products to their clients. They try to integrate all available tools to make a product. In Banking Software Bank also thinks that if many systems are communicating to each other in live environment, chances of fraud are minimized.
National Australia Bank is My Company's client. I personally feel that for a product like Next generation which is called as NGP in our terminology, still in developing state, is going to be a very great. As to provide such a testing environment to the product like NGP in its childhood days is not possible for small sector banks. But thanks to the testing team to test such a huge set of stack.
So, I landed here in Melbourne 6 months back, and when I look at the progress of our product in this span, I can imagine its complexity. As when I left Mumbai, I thought it just a matter of releasing our developed product here in Melbourne and it will be available for the Customers of the Bank to use it.
While writing those pieces of code, it seems too easy for simple transactions, but banking is not for those 90% simple straight forward cases, its about remaining 10% complicated cases, which looks so simple on paper, but when it comes to reality, so many permutation and combinations are applicable on those. For an end user, say ATM user, its just a matter of inserting his card into ATM machine, inputting PIN and amount to withdraw money. End user feel that his account is debited with the transacted amount. But is this which only happens in the system? No, since this is just a simple straight forward transaction, but it is also too much complicated.
Bank don't care about individual accounts for tracking balances because its not feasible, bank have ledgers which keeps a track of their money flow. A ledger can be as granular as an ATM machine, i.e. if bank wants to track balance flows from an ATM machine, then a ledger can be defined. Similarly, other parameters are defined, if more granular balancing is required. On the basis of these parameters bank plays with interest rates and other features to derive their business.
If I close my eyes and think of complex cases, too many transaction comes to my mind within seconds like, Interest calculations, Back dated transaction, reversal, force transaction on invalid account status, interest adjustments, tax calculations, tax adjustments, financial year closure, transactions beyond fin year, tax year etc etc. So, development happens for these cases always takes time. And these cases cannot be think of when we are developing. Since, when we are developing, we are only thinking of one scenario at a time, but in live environment these multiple complex cases can play a silent role in creating a big problem which we have missed during development. For a simple Debit transaction, there are 1000's of test cases.
Over and above all these complexity, security is another complex feature which need to be developed as part of such product. These days security is very crucial as the hackers spreading there network over internet in such a frequency that technology providers are worried about this.
After doing all this, if something happens in the system, then also, people have to think of the solution to bring the system to the normal. Banking looks simple from an ATM machine, but its too complicated from inside like wires in a telephone box which have infinite connections. Will be writing more on individual cases later.
National Australia Bank is My Company's client. I personally feel that for a product like Next generation which is called as NGP in our terminology, still in developing state, is going to be a very great. As to provide such a testing environment to the product like NGP in its childhood days is not possible for small sector banks. But thanks to the testing team to test such a huge set of stack.
So, I landed here in Melbourne 6 months back, and when I look at the progress of our product in this span, I can imagine its complexity. As when I left Mumbai, I thought it just a matter of releasing our developed product here in Melbourne and it will be available for the Customers of the Bank to use it.
While writing those pieces of code, it seems too easy for simple transactions, but banking is not for those 90% simple straight forward cases, its about remaining 10% complicated cases, which looks so simple on paper, but when it comes to reality, so many permutation and combinations are applicable on those. For an end user, say ATM user, its just a matter of inserting his card into ATM machine, inputting PIN and amount to withdraw money. End user feel that his account is debited with the transacted amount. But is this which only happens in the system? No, since this is just a simple straight forward transaction, but it is also too much complicated.
Bank don't care about individual accounts for tracking balances because its not feasible, bank have ledgers which keeps a track of their money flow. A ledger can be as granular as an ATM machine, i.e. if bank wants to track balance flows from an ATM machine, then a ledger can be defined. Similarly, other parameters are defined, if more granular balancing is required. On the basis of these parameters bank plays with interest rates and other features to derive their business.
If I close my eyes and think of complex cases, too many transaction comes to my mind within seconds like, Interest calculations, Back dated transaction, reversal, force transaction on invalid account status, interest adjustments, tax calculations, tax adjustments, financial year closure, transactions beyond fin year, tax year etc etc. So, development happens for these cases always takes time. And these cases cannot be think of when we are developing. Since, when we are developing, we are only thinking of one scenario at a time, but in live environment these multiple complex cases can play a silent role in creating a big problem which we have missed during development. For a simple Debit transaction, there are 1000's of test cases.
Over and above all these complexity, security is another complex feature which need to be developed as part of such product. These days security is very crucial as the hackers spreading there network over internet in such a frequency that technology providers are worried about this.
After doing all this, if something happens in the system, then also, people have to think of the solution to bring the system to the normal. Banking looks simple from an ATM machine, but its too complicated from inside like wires in a telephone box which have infinite connections. Will be writing more on individual cases later.
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