FIX protocol customization

Customization is required, when required changes do not fit into the user defined fields approach (see Repeating group). For example:

• Extend a message with a field, which is standard (tag under 5000) but not defined for this message type
• Change the "required attribute" for a standard field
• Create a new message type and be able to validate it

Note: If validation is disabled, the FIX Engine will operate correctly with any dialect as long as it does not introduce any raw FIX fields. Such fields are required to be configured in the FIX Engine properties file.

Custom dictionaries

Custom dictionaries are required to provide validation functionality for the non-standard FIX dialects.

Custom Dictionary Format

The dictionary format is XML. An example of the FIX Dialect:

Note: this is a condensed variant of a file as it is usually considerably large.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<fixdic xmlns="http://www.b2bits.com/FIXProtocol" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
        xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.b2bits.com/FIXProtocol fixdic.xsd"
        fixversion="4.0" title="FIX 4.0" version="1.4.0" date="2010-04-07">
    ...
    <fielddic>
        ...
        <fielddef tag="148" name="Headline" type="char"/>
        ...
    </fielddic>
    ...
    <msgdef msgtype="B" name="News">
        ...
        <field tag="148" name="Headline" req="Y"/>
        ...
    </msgdef>
    ...
</fixdic>