[Switch] the difference between the Bank's core and the front-end system

At present, the industry defines the core of banking as the centralized processing of traditional businesses. The core of these traditional businesses is centralized transactions based on data records.

1. From the historical evolution, the birth of the Bank's core and front-end systems


From the history of the electronic development of banks, we can clearly see the development and evolution of the Bank's core and banking front-end systems.

In the 1980s S, IBM PC
XT, Apple computer, and Wang An computer have initially penetrated into the banking industry, and many commercial banks have their branches or branches have their savings. Therefore, these computers have built a banking accounting system, transaction types are within a very narrow scope of application.


By the end of 1980s, the State had given priority to China's electronic finance industry. Commercial banks represented by Bank of China had introduced IBM systems 360 and systems 370 series of computer systems, gradually form a unified processing unit for regional application systems. At this time, other commercial banks, such as China Construction Bank, ICBC, and ABC, are still in the stage of heroes. The computer systems in various regions do not have a complete system and application system. From the end of 1980s to the beginning of 1990s, the ICBC Computing Center, the ABC Computing Center, and so on formed an application architecture with the IBM System 370 as the computer system. The pedestrian computing center forms a nationwide Liquidation System. ICBC and ABC are also based on the IBM System 370 platform and gradually form a regional unified banking application system. In this system environment, there is no pre-system of the bank's head office. If there are, only such IBM
The frontend Communication Controller in the SNA architecture, but it does not have the concept of packet conversion on the frontend.


By the end of the 1990s s to the beginning of the 20th century, various commercial banks have concentrated their IBM System banking core accounting systems on the computing centers of their respective headquarters banks. At the same time of centralization, a comprehensive pre-system for banks has been developed in a unified manner to integrate communications from various channels of banks into the integrated pre-system, the communication and exchange messages of various channels communicate with the host transaction system through comprehensive pre-processing. Prior to this, the integrated front-end is mainly used to process the cabinet system and then access the host transaction system through the Integrated front-end. Communication in other channels is negligible, and many systems Process Communication in other channels, instead of classifying this type of communication into a comprehensive frontend, it uses specialized communication programming for processing.


As new businesses continue to expand and hardware display platforms continue to expand, on the one hand, new business types grow rapidly, requiring new businesses to be quickly integrated under traditional business platforms through technical implementation means, that is, the data record-based model will not change, and the new business subsystem can be integrated into the traditional business in the core architecture of the bank, you can also use the intermediate business exchange platform to become a separate function sub-system. On the other hand, the hardware display platform is constantly extended, such as the continuous expansion of ATM self-service functions, the improvement of self-service devices and mobile banking functions, 60% to 70% of traditional services can be extended to these self-help devices. Due to the technical limitations of the traditional core architecture of banks, the expansion of these two types of businesses makes it impossible to quickly integrate new businesses into the traditional core system of banks. Therefore, under the existing architecture, many banks have extended the comprehensive pre-concept of banks. On the one hand, they still maintain the packet Conversion Processing that the bank's counter system enters. On the other hand, extend the concept of comprehensive front-end for banks to the intermediary business exchange platform for banks, switch the packets of the function processing module other than the core transactions of traditional banking businesses, and then enter the corresponding application subsystem for processing through the routing function on the intermediate business application platform. In the transaction processing process, each independent application subsystem must process the data of the traditional core system of the Bank through the intermediate business exchange platform.

Ii. Differences between the core and pre-systems of banks, definition development and architecture Extension


Here, we will go back to the topic of the article: The difference between the Bank's core and the front-end system.


The core of a bank refers to a traditional core banking system that can complete banking transactions and transaction processing. There is no front-end system. If direct communication channels are used, the Bank's core is a separate and operational transaction system.


The front-end system or intermediate business exchange platform does not have the function of processing business transactions. It can only perform packet conversion, encryption and decryption of packets, conversion of communication protocols, and, use the routing function on this platform to transfer or transfer communication packets.


As mentioned above, the new business types of banks are constantly increasing, the types and functions of hardware display platforms are constantly expanding, and the scope of the definition of the core system of Banks has also changed. The traditional banking core model has also changed. The traditional banking core is only used as the accounting system in the Comprehensive Banking Business System. Other business modules also exist in the architecture of the Comprehensive Banking System as the transaction volume increases or the independence of the business module. If a comprehensive banking system has such a three-tier architecture: the channel layer (including the console), the bank's Integrated front layer (intermediate business exchange platform), and the core layer, including Core and non-integrated new business subsystems of traditional banks. What is the core of a bank? In my opinion, before the core of a bank does not effectively resolve the relationship between bank transactions and bank data transaction processing, the architecture integration of the function modules based on bank data records is the core of a bank. The front system is a bridge connecting various processing units and a vascular. Core layer processing units, whether tightly coupled or loosely coupled, are core and internal organs.

As the application system architecture expands and New Technologies flood in, the pre-system role changes with the function changes at different stages.


From the absence of a pre-system concept in the early banking accounting system to the division or centralized processing of bank data, the bank's pre-system was born. With the continuous addition of intermediate businesses, large front-ends, or comprehensive front-ends, or the intermediate business exchange platform replaces the traditional front-end system for entering the host. From the changes in the application development mode based on the database DB2/400 on the as400 platform, the application of new Java frontend technologies, the traditional green screen character operation applications are replaced in many operation image applications that require graphical display. The new transaction processing flow starts from a simple direct-row front-end system or a comprehensive front-end system, and gradually requires such front-end display of public pre-processing to a comprehensive front-end system, in this way, the pre-role is replaced by the ESB platform. The ESB platform includes all the pre-integrated functions, as well as the function encapsulation function of the Java service. It also provides the data pre-processing function for front-end Java to display data or report data.

Iii. outlook for the future


By the way, we will discuss the x86 system computer, that is, the mode in which 'cloud compute' is applied to the core architecture of banks.


It is undeniable that x86 computers have achieved great success in Internet search engines and have successfully created the concept and technology of 'cloud computing. The smallest processing unit of cloud computing in the search engine is the keyword word, and the smallest unit of data flow in cloud computing processing is also the key word of the search engine. However, to apply the 'cloud computing 'concept to the core banking business, we must first solve it: 1) What is the minimum processing unit for bank transactions? 2) What is the smallest data flow unit in the cloud computing mode of bank transactions? After solving these two concepts, in order to achieve transaction integrity, it is necessary to uniformly schedule the cloud computing processing units of the two units, which leads to scheduling problems in the cloud computing system. At the same time, in the cloud computing model, how can we achieve the data integrity of bank transactions? That is, the integrity of bank transaction processing. The IBM distributed database product processes single-point transaction processing with secondary confirmation. In the cloud computing mode, it will not be the confirmation method of the N-point to the n-point to the Npower, right? In this case, the cloud computing model is not suitable for banking. Of course, things are always evolving. Maybe in the near future, new technologies can achieve the integrity of banking transactions in the cloud computing mode. However, so far, computer manufacturers are still in the exploratory stage. If this new technology is born, the banking industry will not be a crab eater, and there will certainly be a long buffer period.

[Switch] the difference between the Bank's core and the front-end system