How ZeroMarkets Transformed Their MySQL Trading Analytics from Hours to Seconds with Epsio

“It used to take 45 minutes to run all the queries in our dashboards, so we had to pre-calculate them and display outdated data. With Epsio, our dashboards load in real time, and show up-to-date data!” — Coyote Zhong, Head of Risk and Data

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About ZeroMarkets

ZeroMarkets is a global online broker providing access to a wide range of financial markets, including forex, indices, commodities, and shares. By embracing cutting-edge technologies to enhance the trading experience, ZeroMarkets enables clients to trade in a dynamic, responsive, and incentive-driven environment.

The Challenge

ZeroMarkets’ customers depend on real-time trading metrics to drive critical investment and campaign decisions. However, the platform’s MySQL database struggled under the weight of these complex, high-velocity calculations, with some queries taking as long as 45 minutes to complete. To compensate, ZeroMarkets resorted to pre-calculating results and refreshing them at fixed intervals, leaving users with outdated data that failed to reflect real-time market conditions.

This delay was especially problematic for customers managing time-sensitive promotions and trading incentive programs. Without live data, they couldn’t accurately track progress toward program goals or react swiftly to market changes, ultimately compromising their experience and effectiveness on the ZeroMarkets platform.

The Solution

ZeroMarkets solved their performance challenges by implementing Epsio’s incremental query engine. Rather than repeatedly processing their entire dataset with resource-intensive MySQL queries, Epsio continuously maintains pre-calculated results that update in real-time as new data arrives. This transformation enabled ZeroMarkets to deliver near-instant dashboard loading times while ensuring customers always see the latest trading metrics.

The integration process proved straightforward: ZeroMarkets deployed Epsio within their existing AWS infrastructure using a CloudFormation template to provision a dedicated EC2 instance. This approach allowed them to preserve their existing MySQL database while gaining the powerful advantages of incremental computation. By layering Epsio’s capabilities on top of their current stack, ZeroMarkets achieved dramatic performance improvements without disrupting their core infrastructure.

After a simple deployment process of less than 30 minutes, ZeroMarkets already had their first Epsio view up and running.

“We just wrote a couple of lines of SQL, ran it, and it just worked. That’s it”

The Result

Once deployed, Epsio significantly dropped the query execution time from 45 minutes to just a few seconds, representing a 1000x improvement in processing time. This dramatic performance improvement transformed Zero Markets’ ability to serve their customers in several key ways:

1. Improved Customer Experience: Instead of waiting up to 45 minutes for dashboard refreshes, Zero Markets’ customers now see their trading metrics and promotion progress update in real-time. This immediate feedback allows traders to make more informed decisions and actively track their progress toward incentive program goals.
2. Simplified Development: The Zero Markets team significantly reduced their development complexity by replacing custom Java refresh APIs and complex extraction processes with simple SQL queries. As their Head of Risk and Data noted: “We don’t have to code a lot of complex matrices in the backend now. We just write a couple of lines of SQL”
3. Infrastructure Separation: Zero Markets gained the ability to segregate their analytical workloads from their production environment. This separation allows them to perform complex calculations without impacting their core trading platform’s performance, while maintaining data consistency and security.
4. Competitive advantage: As a technology-forward trading platform, the integration of Epsio aligned perfectly with Zero Markets’ commitment to embracing innovative solutions that enhance the trading experience. The performance gains and real-time capabilities have positioned them to better serve their customers and continue evolving their platform.