Search

OATS

Home > Regulatory Systems > OATS
Printer-Friendly OATS Testing

All parties transmitting information to OATS should test their systems thoroughly before they begin reporting production data. Testing will be available before and during production. OSOs will have access to the test system any time they want to retest their reporting software.

Before testing with the OATS application can begin, parties must register with OATS and obtain a valid User ID and Password. OSOs can transmit to the OATS test environment via File Transfer Protocol (FTP) as soon as they have a connection to FINRA’s private network and they have been assigned an OSO ID, User ID, and Password. (Additional information about transmitting via FTP can be found in the OATS Subscriber Manual.) OSOs can transmit to the OATS test environment via encrypted e-mail beginning January 19, 1999, as soon as they have requested and stored FINRA Security Certificate and have been assigned an OSO ID, User ID, and Password. They can transmit to the OATS test environment via the OATS Web interface beginning January 19, 1999, as soon as they have been assigned an OSO ID, User ID, and Password. (Additional information about transmitting via e-mail and the Web can be found in the OATS Subscriber Manual that will be released in January 1999.)

OATS will process all data it receives in the testing environment the same way as the data it receives in the production environment; for example, after sending order data to OATS, you will be able to obtain or view feedback on the status of that data. The differences between the test and the production environment will be the address used to contact OATS, the password used to connect to OATS, and the availability of immediate record rejections.

No special security symbols or MP IDs have been created for testing. Any symbols for non-Nasdaq securities or invalid MP IDs will be rejected by the OATS test system.

Order events that do not link to an existing New Order Report in OATS will be rejected from both the OATS test environment and the OATS production environment. Limit orders are maintained for six months in the OATS application. If order events for a particular limit order occur more than six months after the New Order Report was submitted to OATS, the subsequent order events will be rejected. Do not submit to OATS order events related to a particular order if no New Order Report for that order has been submitted to OATS. For example, if you submit test data on Tuesday, and it includes an Execution Report for an order that was placed on Monday, the Execution Report will be rejected unless the related New Order Report was also submitted to OATS.

The FTP address for the testing environment is ftp-oatstest.nasdr.com. The FTP address for the production environment is ftp-oats.nasdr.com. When communicating with FINRA via FTP, OSOs are required to use the DNS server addresses described in the OATS Subscriber Manual to resolve the systems’ host names, unless they have alternative means of resolving these host names. The e-mail address for the testing environment is testoatsfiles@finra.org. The e-mail address for the production environment is oatsfiles@finra.org. The Web address for the testing environment is https://oatstest.nasd.com/. The Web address for the production environment is https://oats.nasd.com/.

(NOTE: The version of OATS described by the November 1998 edition of the OATS Reporting Technical Specifications will be available January 19, 1999. All files and records submitted to OATS beginning January 19, 1999, must comply with these specifications or they will be rejected.)

The OATS test system will be available 24 hours a day/5 days a week, from 8 a.m. Eastern Time on Monday to 8 a.m. Eastern Time on Saturday. NASD Business and Technology Support Services will only provide administrative and technical support during regular business hours, which are 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., Eastern Time, Monday through Friday.