RAP is available in two versions: RAP – The Trading Edition Standard (RAP Standard) and RAP – The Trading Edition Enterprise (RAP Enterprise).
Both versions consolidate market data from vendor feeds, historical time series data, real-time trades and quotes (TAQ) data, and
reference data into one integrated analytics platform. RAP allows you to process market data, send it over
the network, and load messages into the appropriate data stores, including both an in-memory cache database that provides immediate data access, and a historical repository that
can manage massive historical and corporate reference data sets efficiently. The historical repository supports advanced data compression, clustered deployments, and OLAP analytics.
RAP Enterprise includes all the functionality of RAP Standard, but also includes the following additional features and options that are not available in RAP Standard:
- SQL functions for financial time series and forecasting analysis. The time series SQL functions call two integrated third-party libraries, the IMSL C Stat and C Math libraries, developed by Visual Numerics. The IMSL libraries contain C functions that implement sophisticated time series analytics. The historical repository automatically loads the IMSL libraries as needed when a valid SQL function is called. See Sybase IQ 15.1 New Features Summary.
- In-database Analytics—Partner Solutions option, with user-defined scalar and aggregate functions that incorporate proprietary and commercial statistical and mathematical libraries written in C/C++ directly within the historical repository’s high-performance user-defined function (UDF) execution environment.
- RAP Enterprise incorporates the VLDB (Very Large Database) features offer range partitioning and the ability to perform finely-tuned data placement, that is, placing less critical data on cheaper storage. This feature set is often referred to as hierarchical storage management. See Sybase IQ 15.1 System Administration Guide: Volume 1.
Note: RAP does not currently support license files that entitle unlimited VLDB. RAP Enterprise customers are provided a 50TB license; if you need additional storage, contact Sybase Customer Service & Support.
You can scale the grid technology in the historical repository, where concurrent data loads and queries via independent data processing nodes connect to a shared disk multiplex. Adding more than two servers to a multiplex requires the separately licensed RAP Multiplex Option. See Using Sybase IQ 15.1 Multiplex Guide.