I Took the Shortest, Cheapest Route to Build my Financial Web App - And So Should You

Over the last couple of months I have been working on a new Web App - Stock Data Dashboard.

The app allows amateur investors to explore their local market via popular large-cap market indices and their underlying constituents. Alas, as I do not plan to monetize the app, I did not want to spend more than the bare minimum required to set it up, but I also did not want to relinquish performance or content.

Let's take a look at the app's architecture (simplified for readability).

Simple, isn't it?

Now for a little elaboration:

• Data is sourced from Yahoo! Finance and Wikipedia.
• I used API calls to extract stock prices from Yahoo, and web scraping to extract earning estimates from Yahoo and company data from Wikipedia.
• The entire ETL process is handled by PowerShell alone, which allowed me to build it quickly and efficiently. I used the BCP tool to upload data into my SQL Server instance.
• For my application server I used Amazon EC2, and for the SQL instance I used Amazon RDS. Both are linked to my Amazon Free Tier account.
• Additional image processing is done on the application server to create multiple copies of images with varying dimensions for various devices - I did this for SEO and performance purposes. This, again, is accomplished by use of PowerShell.
• .NET Web API with Entity Framework allowed me to build my RESTful HTTP interface to my SQL instance in no time at all.
• For front end I used AngularJS with Angular Material. I built the app as close to a mobile app as possible (following the Progressive Web App trend). I accomplished this by implementing several design decisions, such as using a single-page app design, scrolling tabs, using a card-like layout, and implementing Google's Material Design.
• Prefabbed analysis and aggregates on the database, as well as efficient database design, allows responses to be delivered in lightning speed.
• Responsive design allows the app to display on desktop, tablet and mobile with slight variations to layout and content.

• Charts were added to the page using Google's excellent Google Charts library.
• RSS feeds are sourced from Yahoo! Finance using the Google Feed API.

How much did I pay for all this, you ask? A whopping 23.23$ a year...

Since I used Amazon Free Tier, which cost me nothing, I only had to pay for the GoDaddy domain name. If I didn't opt to order domain protection as well, I would be paying less than a dollar.

Given such a simple architecture, a one-man team could have a POC ready within a month. How's that for lean?

Nowadays you do not need to pay extravagant amounts or hire tons of developers to build a simple app - cutting costs and building efficiently will result in more earnings and more business.

I am currently based in Sydney, Australia and advise on Compliance systems implementation for financial institutions in areas such as AML, Market Surveillance and CDD/KYC on behalf of Matrix-IFS (a global financial services company).

If your organization is in need of such services please contact me on [email protected] and we can discuss cutting costs and improving coverage for your business.