[erlang-questions] Erlang for Payment Systems

[Mikael Pettersson]

Hassan Sowwan writes:
 >  Hello,
 >  
 > I am trying to implement payment messaging middleware and would like to explore the option of using Erlang/OTP.
 >  
 > The application will be used in banking industry to interface with EFT payment switch/networks and core banking system to process card transactions.
 >  
 > It will be responsible to perform following tasks:
 >  
 > Communicate with external interfaces using ISO 8583 messaging format ( thru TCP/IP)Receive huge amount of data over the socket ( HEX, BINARY, EBCIDIC), which represents financial transactions.Parse/decode the received data.Perform some checking in database for validationInterface with host security module to validate customer PIN and other security checks.Sends the request to core banking system via XML or web services callRespond back to external interfaces by formulating the response message in ISO 8583 format 
 > Obviously, such applications have to be concurrent and fast enough to process transactions within few seconds.  
 >  
 > Now my question here, is Erlang a good choice for implementing this type of applications ?

Erlang works fine in the fintech domain, as long as your system architecture is sound.

 > Can Erlang handle string processing efficiently without impacting the system performance?

With approproate design and implementation, yes.

 > As stated before, there will be a lot of string manipulation to decode data received over the network, so I am not sure whether erlang fits perfectly or not.

For low-level protocol decoding use binaries and binary matching.