The Lightstreamer Blog

🔥Introducing Lightstreamer Kafka Connector!

2024-04-30T16:47:00.001+02:00

We are thrilled to announce the latest addition to the Lightstreamer family: the Lightstreamer Kafka Connector, now available to you at no additional cost!

As many of you are aware, the Apache Kafka® platform is the industry standard for distributed event streaming, used by 80% of Fortune 100 companies. It excels in creating high-performance data pipelines, for streaming analytics, data integration, and mission-critical applications, handling vast volumes of data with unmatched throughput and reliability.

However, Kafka faces challenges in the "last mile" of data delivery—direct streaming to end-users, especially through firewalls and proxies, traversing unreliable networks, and scaling to large numbers of concurrent connections. Essentially, Kafka was not built with the public internet in mind.

Enter the Lightstreamer Kafka Connector. This tool bridges the gap, merging Lightstreamer's legendary streaming capabilities with Kafka’s robust infrastructure, delivering a seamless solution in perfect synergy. Here are just a few of the benefits:

Intelligent Streaming & Adaptive Throttling: Optimize the data flow with smart bandwidth management, automatic data conflation, and delta delivery.
Massive Scalability: Connect millions of clients without compromising performance.
Firewall & Proxy Traversal: Deliver real-time data to clients anywhere, overcoming network barriers.
Comprehensive Client API Support: Includes fully supported SDKs for web, Android, iOS, Python, Java, Flutter, .NET, Node.js, and more!
Extensive Broker Compatibility: Compatible with leading brokers such as Apache Kafka, Confluent Platform, Confluent Cloud, Amazon MSK, Redpanda, Aiven, and others.

Haxe and Statecharts: The Evolution of Lightstreamer SDKs

2024-02-06T10:55:00.005+01:00

In the digital age, where information moves faster than ever, real-time data streaming has become a cornerstone of modern software development. From financial markets to social media feeds, the demand for live, up-to-the-second data is ubiquitous. Enter Lightstreamer: a robust server engineered to meet this demand by delivering real-time data to any Internet-connected device, anywhere in the world. Lightstreamer excels in situations that require the rapid transmission of live data, such as trading platforms, multiplayer games, and live broadcasting services, making it an invaluable tool for developers across a spectrum of industries.

Enabling Real-Time Data Streaming on Apple Vision Pro with Lightstreamer for visionOS

2024-01-10T10:46:00.001+01:00

The landscape of spatial computing is advancing with significant strides, and at the forefront is Apple’s Vision Pro headset, a remarkable innovation powered by the newly introduced visionOS. This operating system, revealed at WWDC 2023, is Apple's latest venture into the realm of augmented and virtual reality, bringing a new level of immersion and interactivity to the user experience.

Springing into Real-Time: Crafting a Lightstreamer Remote Adapter with Spring Boot

2023-12-21T17:13:00.002+01:00

Spring Boot is an ideal framework for building stand-alone applications that implement remote adapters for Lightstreamer. There are several compelling reasons for choosing Spring Boot in this context:

1. Simplicity and Speed: Spring Boot simplifies the development process by providing a wide range of pre-configured templates, which significantly speeds up application setup and deployment. This is crucial when implementing adapters for real-time data streaming services like Lightstreamer.

Real-Time Data Made Easy: Empowering Excel with Lightstreamer and RTD Integration

2023-08-02T19:09:00.000+02:00

If you are new to Lightstreamer, it's a real-time messaging server that allows data to be pushed to mobile, web, and desktop applications in real-time. Its optimized transmission algorithms make it the right choice for applications that require low-latency data delivery, such as financial trading, online gaming, and data streaming services.

Excel is a popular spreadsheet software developed by Microsoft. It is used to organize, analyze, and visualize data in various industries and fields. Excel provides numerous features and functions to perform calculations, create charts, and manage data efficiently.

RTD stands for Real-Time Data and is a specific functionality in Excel. It enables users to retrieve and display real-time data from external sources, such as financial markets, databases, or other data feeds. With RTD, users can create dynamic and constantly updating spreadsheets, making it particularly useful for monitoring and analyzing time-sensitive information.

In essence, Excel is a versatile tool for data manipulation, while RTD is a specialized feature that facilitates the integration of real-time data to keep spreadsheets up-to-date with the latest information.

In this blog post, we delve into the remarkable potential of merging Lightstreamer, RTD (Real-Time Data), and Excel to supercharge financial data analysis. Discover how this seamless integration empowers traders, analysts, and financial professionals to tap into real-time market data and transform Excel into a dynamic financial dashboard for diverse applications across trading, portfolio management, and market analysis, and witness how this powerful trio unlocks previously untapped data-driven opportunities. Stay ahead of the curve in the fast-paced financial world by harnessing the real-time capabilities of Lightstreamer, RTD, and Excel for unparalleled insights and decision-making precision.

Lightstreamer 7.4.0 and New SDKs

2023-07-20T19:10:00.003+02:00

We are thrilled to announce a momentous new release of Lightstreamer, encompassing both the Lightstreamer Server and all the Lightstreamer Client SDKs and Adapter SDKs. This significant update introduces groundbreaking features and improvements, enhancing the overall performance and functionality of Lightstreamer.

Virtual Airport Demo: Connecting Kafka to Lightstreamer

2023-03-08T17:34:00.002+01:00

This blog post continues the series of examples through which we want to show various technologies that can be used as a data source to power a Lightstreamer Data Adapter and, in turn, dispatch the data to multiple clients connected to the Lightstreamer server all around the internet.

We have already published a post where we dealt with the integration with DynamoDB: "Virtual Airport Demo: Connecting DynamoDB to Lightstreamer."

In this post, we will show a basic integration with Apache Kafka.

Virtual Airport Demo: Connecting DynamoDB to Lightstreamer

2023-01-30T17:11:00.000+01:00

We're excited to announce the release of our newest demo. And no, this time it's not a stock-list demo 😉

We switched things up a bit, and the new demo simulates a very simple departures board with a few rows showing real-time flight information to passengers of a hypothetical airport. The data are simulated in the back-end and retrieved from an Amazon DynamoDB data source. In short, we showcase our cool "virtual airport" where you can pretend to take a flight without ever leaving your home!

The live demo is available at https://demos.lightstreamer.com/DynamoDBDemo/

Introducing the Lightstreamer Flutter plugin

2022-10-19T18:10:00.000+02:00

We recently introduced the Lightstreamer Flutter plugin to respond to the increasing requests dictated by the incredible success that the Flutter framework for creating multi-platform applications has been encountering for some years now.

You can find the plugin in the official package repository for Dart and Flutter apps: https://pub.dev/packages/lightstreamer_flutter_client

Discover Lightstreamer 7.3

2022-09-27T18:11:00.004+02:00

We are proud to announce that Lightstreamer 7.3 has been publicly released.

You can download it right now from https://www.lightstreamer.com/download/

The official Docker image and the Amazon EC2 AMI are available too.

Lightstreamer 7.3 and the most recent client and adapter SDKs bring many improvements and fixes, mainly covering performance and features. Below are some highlights but you can check out the full list in the Server changelog and the changelogs of the various SDKs, that can be reached from the download page.

Lightstreamer Monitoring - Integration with Prometheus and Grafana

2022-03-10T11:02:00.017+01:00

Embedded in the factory download of the Lightstreamer server there is a Monitoring Dashboard ready for use. It is configured to work out of the box and provides many real-time metrics and statistics on the behavior of the Lightstreamer Server.

The Monitoring Dashboard is a convenient means of watching the server for both developers and systems administrators. By default, it is available at the "/dashboard/" URI of the Lightstreamer Server.

Push real-time data to Progressive Web Apps (PWA)

2021-11-11T18:20:00.000+01:00

Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are web applications that use the features of modern browsers to offer a native-app-like experience on every platform. They rest on three pillars: responsiveness, reliability, and installability.

PWAs are responsive because they render well on a variety of devices and window sizes to ensure usability and user satisfaction.

PWAs are reliable because they are usable regardless of network connection.

PWAs are installable because they can be added to the user's home screen, dock, or taskbar. It is possible to search for them on a device and jump between them with the app switcher like native apps.

In more and more scenarios, PWAs are replacing native mobile apps and hybrid apps, to save on development and maintenance costs, while enlarging the compatibility with the broad base of client-side platforms.

There are many uses cases where applications need to receive real-time data, pushed by a server over a streaming channel: online trading platform in the financial brokerage space, monitoring dashboards, second-screen applications, group chats, betting solutions, and many more.

Is it easy to push live data to a PWA? The short answer is yes if you use a modern streaming engine like Lightstreamer.

Lightstreamer Server 7.2 Released

2021-08-04T18:53:00.001+02:00

We are delighted to announce that Lightstreamer 7.2 has been publicly released.

You can download it right now from https://www.lightstreamer.com/download/

The official Docker image and the Amazon EC2 AMI are available too.

Lightstreamer 7.2 and the most recent client and adapter SDKs bring many improvements and fixes, mainly covering performance and features. This, in many aspects, completes the renovation work started with Lightstreamer 7.0. Below are some highlights but you can check out the full list in the changelog.

Introducing support for Swift Package Manager and Apple Silicon

2021-01-08T17:02:00.003+01:00

The latest version of our client SDKs for iOS, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS, version 4.3.0, is now distributed via Swift Package Manager and includes support for Apple Silicon Macs.

At the same time, with this version, we are dismissing CocoaPods as a package manager. The last version available on CocoaPods is and always will be version 4.2.1.

Read on for a quick How-To on switching from CocoaPods to SPM.

Lightstreamer Web Client 8.1.0-beta

2020-09-28T14:57:00.005+02:00

We have started the beta testing of the new Lightstreamer Web Client library, v. 8.1.0.

The main difference with the previous version is in the connection setup mechanism, also known as stream-sense. With version 8.1.0, instead of creating a session over HTTP and then switching to WebSocket, a session is created directly over WebSocket, while preserving the ability to fall back to HTTP. This means that in most cases, clients are able to set up the streaming channel with one connection only instead of two, reducing the session initiation time and overhead.

The new beta library is available on npm and you can test it in non-production environments.

Please get back to us for any feedback and questions.

Lightstreamer Server 7.1.2

2020-09-28T14:49:00.002+02:00

We are happy to announce that Lightstreamer Server v. 7.1.2 is now publicly available.

You can download it, as usual, from https://lightstreamer.com/download/

This new distribution does not contain the Lightstreamer SDKs anymore. With time passing, every SDK has found its own home within standard repositories, depending on the platform. So, it makes no more sense to bundle them with the Server distribution. For example, the JavaScripts libs are available on npm, the Java libs on Maven, etc. You can find all the links on the same download page.

Furthermore, Lightstreamer Server v. 7.1.2 contains some minor fixes and improvements (check out the changelog).

New Lightstreamer .NET Standard Client v.5.0.0 Now Available

2020-02-26T12:30:00.004+01:00

We are very excited to announce the availability of a brand new Lightstreamer client API for Microsoft .NET Standard specifications.

What's new

The new library introduces full support for the Unified Client API model, which we have been introducing in all Lightstreamer client libraries for some years now (indeed the first "Unified" library was JavaScript 6.0). The big advantage of using the Unified API is the same consistent interface and behavior are guaranteed across different client platforms. In other words, the same abstractions and internal mechanisms are provided for very different platforms (Web, Android, Java, iOS, .NET, Node.js, etc.), while respecting the conventions, styles, and best practice of each platform.
Read more »

The New Features in Lightstreamer 7.1

2020-01-28T16:21:00.000+01:00

We are extremely proud to announce the public availability of Lightstreamer 7.1, the best Lightstreamer ever!

Together with Lightstreamer Server 7.1, we released updated SDKs for Clients and Adapters.

This release contains hundreds of exciting improvements, optimizations, and fixes. Some of the main new features are highlighted below. To learn about all the other improvements and fixes, please go through the complete changelog.
Read more »

Lightstreamer and Xamarin - a New version of Our Stock-List Demo

2018-12-19T12:59:00.000+01:00

Xamarin, or more precisely Xamarin.Forms, is a cross-platform UI toolkit that allows developers to efficiently create native user interface layouts that can be shared across iOS, Android, and Universal Windows Platform apps.

Here at Lightstreamer we decided to create a new demo that, leveraging our .Net Standard Client API and Xamarin.Forms, shows how simple is, with very few lines of code, to create an application that displays full real-time data. The same code base can then be used to build iOS, Android, and UWP apps.
Read more »

Meet Our Customers: ActivTrades

2018-05-18T10:23:00.000+02:00

An interview with Rosen Mehanov, Senior Developer at ActivTrades. Rosen will explain the architecture of ActivTrades' trading platform and how Lightstreamer powers real-time data push.

ActivTrades is a well known online broker focused on FX, CFDs, and Spread Betting. May you please provide any further details on your business and offering?

Founded in 2001 as a small brokerage house, ActivTrades rapidly developed into an award-winning global derivatives broker for retail and institutional clients.
Our clients enjoy benefits associated with the fact that ActivTrades:
Read more »

Data Streaming vs. Push Notifications

2018-04-06T11:35:00.001+02:00

When dealing with mobile apps, the difference between real-time data streaming and push notifications is not always clear to everybody. Let's try to delve into this topic.

With data streaming, the server sends real-time data directly to the app, leveraging WebSockets and/or HTTP. This requires the app to be running and, with iOS, to be in foreground.
With push notifications, the server sends messages to Google's and Apple's servers, which deliver them to the mobile devices. Notifications are received by the device even if the app that subscribed to them is not in foreground or is not even running.

Lightstreamer 7.0 Released

2018-03-02T15:09:00.000+01:00

We are delighted to announce that Lightstreamer 7 has been publicly released.

You can download it right now from https://www.lightstreamer.com/download/

The official Docker image and the Amazon EC2 AMI are available too.

Lightstreamer 7 and the client SDKs include hundreds of improvements and fixes, covering performance, features, compatibility, and licensing. This makes Lightstreamer more solid and faster than ever. Below are some highlights but you can check out the full list in the change log.
Read more »

New watchOS SDK Now Available

2018-02-16T18:40:00.002+01:00

If you are one of our customers (and if you are not, what are you waiting for?), you know the Lightstreamer company is customer driven. Whenever a customer requests a new feature, we do all we can to comply.

So, when a customer asked us if we had a watchOS Client Library on the roadmap, during Fall 2017, we scheduled it for Q1 2018. Now, we are happy to announce it is available and ready for integration in your WatchKit extensions.

The new watchOS SDK derives from the iOS SDK version 4.0.0 and retains the same version number. It includes all the APIs and features of the iOS SDK, with the single exception of WebSocket support (due to limitations of the watchOS platform).

Let's dig into some examples.

Note: if you need download and example pointers, jump directly to the end of the post ("Get the SDK").
Read more »

Cloud License Manager

2018-02-12T13:03:00.000+01:00

Starting from Lightstreamer 7, a new license verification mechanism has been introduced, called Cloud License Manager (CLM). With CLM, licensing happens online, with no more need for license files bound to the MAC address of the hosting machine. The increase in flexibility is tremendous.

Read more »

Switching to the New Lightstreamer 7 Editions

2018-02-09T17:27:00.000+01:00

For the last few years, Lightstreamer has been organized into four different editions, which got their names from Italian musical tempo terms, namely Moderato, Allegro, Presto, and Vivace. Now, with the upcoming release of Lightstreamer 7, the editions are going to change, to offer maximum flexibility to our customers.

In this post, we will explain how the old editions map onto the new ones for existing customers.

Read more »