Frequently Asked Questions

3forge is the Application Engine for Finance, a finance-native platform for building and operating real-time applications. It brings together live and historical data access, event processing, user interfaces, scripting, governance, and operational tooling in one runtime. Instead of stitching together separate products for messaging, databases, dashboards, permissions, and workflow logic, teams build on a shared production-grade foundation and focus on the business logic that makes their applications unique.

Not in the generic sense. 3forge is better described as a finance-native application engine. It includes visual development capabilities and fast UI composition, but its real value is that the runtime itself already includes the data, logic, governance, and operational capabilities financial institutions repeatedly need. That makes it fundamentally different from a generic low-code tool or a standalone dashboard product.

3forge is deployed at Tier-1 investment banks, global hedge funds, asset managers, prime brokers, exchanges, and sovereign wealth funds. Clients range from large sell-side institutions with thousands of users to lean buy-side firms that need to move fast without building infrastructure from scratch.

Common use cases include trading desk applications, real-time risk and P&L, post-trade reconciliation, compliance monitoring, and operational dashboards.

BI tools are designed for business analysts querying static or batch-refreshed datasets. 3forge is engineered for developers building applications on top of real-time streaming data, with sub-millisecond update latency, complex event processing, and full programmatic control over every aspect of the system.

Unlike BI tools, 3forge is a complete development platform: it includes its own in-memory database, feed handler framework, scripting language (AMIScript), and a deployment model designed for 24/7 production environments in regulated industries.

3forge is primarily deployed on-premises within client infrastructure, which is required by most institutional clients due to data residency, security, and regulatory constraints. Private cloud and hybrid deployments are fully supported, including containerized environments running on Kubernetes.

Managed deployment options are available for select use cases. Contact us to discuss what deployment model best fits your environment.

3forge licensing is tailored to each institution's deployment scale and use case. Our commercial team works with you to structure an agreement that reflects the scope of your deployment, whether you're running a single business unit or a global, multi-region rollout.

Please reach out through the contact form or request a demo to begin a commercial discussion.

3forge supports major enterprise environments across Windows, Linux, Apple platforms, and Android. Browser support includes Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Internet Explorer, and Safari. It also supports Docker and Kubernetes, a range of cloud providers, common source control systems, and desktop container environments used in financial desktops. For connectivity, 3forge supports a broad set of databases, APIs, messaging systems, and feed handlers.

3forge connects to virtually any data source via its JDBC adapter framework, including Oracle, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, Sybase, and kdb+. Dedicated high-performance adapters are available for Bloomberg (BPIPE and datasource API), Refinitiv, QuantHouse, and other market data vendors.

For messaging and streaming infrastructure, 3forge supports Kafka, Solace, AMPS, Hazelcast, Tibco EMS, IBM MQ, and Redis. Custom feed handlers can be implemented via the published Java plugin API.

Yes. 3forge ships with dedicated Bloomberg integrations: BPIPE for real-time market data subscriptions (introduced in Summer 2024) and the Bloomberg Datasource Adapter for access to historical and reference data (introduced in Fall 2024). Both are supported out of the box as licensed Bloomberg clients.

Yes. 3forge supports the FDC3 standard for interoperability with OpenFin and Finsemble desktop containers. Applications built on 3forge can participate in cross-application context sharing and intent handling within these frameworks. Finsemble callbacks were added in the Summer 2023 release.

Yes. 3forge supports gRPC for connecting microservices (added in Spring 2025) and exposes a REST API Server that makes Database data and monitoring information accessible to external systems. Outbound REST calls can also be made from AMIScript for event-driven integrations.

Minimum requirements vary by workload. A development instance runs comfortably on a modern laptop with 16 GB RAM. Production deployments at Tier-1 banks routinely run on high-memory servers (256 GB – 1 TB RAM) to accommodate large in-memory datasets.

Because 3forge is a JVM-based system, heap sizing, GC tuning, and CPU core count are the primary performance levers. Our solutions engineering team will advise on sizing during the onboarding process.

A base 3forge environment can be stood up in hours. Most clients have a working prototype integrated with their internal data sources within days to weeks, depending on the complexity of the data pipeline. Full production rollouts, including security integration, SDLC workflows, and user acceptance testing, typically complete within a few weeks.

3forge's solutions engineers provide hands-on implementation support throughout the process.

Yes. 3forge is distributed as a Docker image and is fully compatible with Kubernetes-based orchestration. This includes support for horizontal pod autoscaling, resource limits, persistent volume claims for the 3forge Historical Database, and integration with cluster-level secrets management for credentials.

The best starting point is a 30-minute demo with a 3forge solutions engineer. We tailor the conversation to your specific use cases, data environment, and team structure, so you can evaluate fit quickly and move toward a proof of concept on your own infrastructure.

Use the "Book a demo" button on any page, or reach out directly through our contact page.

AMIScript is 3forge's built-in scripting language for defining business logic, event handling, and UI behavior within applications. Its syntax is designed to be familiar to Java and JavaScript developers, and it runs directly within the 3forge runtime, eliminating the need for a separate application tier for most logic.

AMIScript supports callbacks, variables, loops, conditionals, and direct access to Database tables, feed adapters, and external systems. All callbacks have in-product documentation accessible from the IDE.

SQL familiarity is helpful but not required for all development tasks. Database uses a SQL-like query language for datamodels, and developers fluent in SQL will feel at home. The Smart Datamodeler tool (available since Summer 2022) abstracts much of the query construction into a visual interface, lowering the barrier for teams less experienced with query languages.

For complex event processing, joins, and streaming aggregations, deeper SQL understanding will improve development speed and result quality.

Yes. 3forge has built-in Source Control Management integration (introduced in Winter 2020), enabling versioning of layouts, datamodels, and scripts. This integrates with Git-based workflows and supports standard SDLC practices including branching, merging, and code review.

The platform also supports SDLC hooks that let teams enforce promotion policies, from development through UAT to production, without leaving the 3forge environment.

Yes, concurrent development on the same layout is supported as of the Spring 2025 release. 3forge provides a built-in merge tool that allows multiple developers to make changes independently and reconcile differences before promotion, similar to how Git manages code conflicts, but designed specifically for 3forge layouts and datamodels.

Yes. Developers can create fully custom components using AMIScript and the platform's form framework. Custom web-based components can also be embedded through AMI's external panel support. For teams with specific visualization requirements, such as custom charting or specialized trading UI elements, the platform provides the hooks needed to integrate third-party libraries or proprietary components.

Development in 3forge happens inside a browser-based environment that combines data modeling, query analysis, AMIScript development, layout construction, debugging, and operational inspection. Teams can define data models, build dashboards and workflows, write business logic, create event-driven processing, and manage source-controlled changes from one environment. The goal is not just faster UI building, but faster end-to-end application delivery.

Datamodels are generally best for per-user, query-driven shaping of data, while realtime tables are generally best for shared, delta-driven state across many users. This distinction matters for scale and architecture. Teams should avoid using per-user models for globally shared hot state when a realtime table would be more appropriate.

3forge is designed with resiliency patterns suitable for production environments. Depending on deployment design, this can include hot-hot or hot-warm Center replication, multiple Web components, web balancing, and distributed user profile management. For messaging continuity, 3forge supports journaling and replay patterns so downstream components can recover missed data after reconnecting. Recovery should be discussed in the context of the specific deployment architecture, rather than as a one-size-fits-all checkbox.

In an HA deployment, Database state is continuously replicated to a standby node. Upon failover, the standby node takes over with minimal data loss, typically measured in milliseconds rather than seconds. Feed handlers automatically reconnect and resume subscriptions, allowing the in-memory dataset to be rebuilt quickly from live data.

For use cases requiring full historical persistence across failures, the 3forge Historical Database provides durable on-disk storage that survives node restarts.

Yes. 3forge's replication architecture supports multi-region deployments with asynchronous replication between data centers. This is commonly used by global institutions operating across New York, London, Hong Kong, and other financial centers where each region requires both local performance and cross-region consistency.

Advanced replication mechanisms for the AMI Center were introduced in the Summer 2022 release.

3forge integrates with enterprise key management systems (KMS) such as HashiCorp Vault and CyberArk, enabling real-time key access without storing sensitive credentials on the server. This means passwords and connection strings are retrieved dynamically at runtime and never persist on disk within the 3forge deployment. This capability was introduced in the Winter 2021 release.

3forge is deployed at institutions with thousands of concurrent users across 24/7 global operations. The Web Balancer and Web Manager components provide out-of-the-box horizontal scaling of the web tier without relying on third-party infrastructure. Specific user capacity depends on the complexity of the dashboards and the number of active subscriptions per session.

End-to-end latency from market data receipt to UI update is typically in the single-digit millisecond range for standard deployments. For latency-sensitive workflows, such as options pricing or execution monitoring, 3forge's in-memory architecture eliminates the overhead of round-trips to external databases, which is where most competing solutions introduce delays.

3forge also supports nanosecond and microsecond timestamp granularity for precise latency measurement and broker-level analytics.

The 3forge Historical Database (introduced in Fall 2022) is purpose-built for storing petabytes of time-series and event data on disk with extremely fast on-demand query performance. It integrates directly with Database, allowing historical and real-time data to be queried together within a single datamodel, eliminating the need for a separate data warehouse layer.

Storage compression, column-oriented layout, and integrated analysis tools make it cost-effective even at very high data volumes.

No. Scaling the web tier is handled natively by the Web Balancer: no external load balancer or service mesh is required, though they can be used if your infrastructure policy requires it. Data tier scaling is achieved by adding AMI Center nodes under replication, with no dependency on external caching or messaging layers for core functionality.

3forge is built to handle both high-throughput real-time workloads and very large historical datasets. Its architecture supports horizontal and vertical scaling, streaming analytics, and complex event processing, while also supporting large-scale historical query workloads in the same platform. The right scaling model depends on workload shape, concurrency, and latency targets, including patterns with parallel Centers, Web nodes, and dynamic scaling without disruptive reconfiguration.

Security is a core part of the platform rather than an add-on. 3forge supports SSO, SAML, OAuth, and role-based access control, with fine-grained entitlement models that can extend down to field or cell visibility depending on the application design. Communications are encrypted in transit, and 3forge supports encryption at rest and secure replication patterns. For customers in regulated environments, governance, auditability, and controlled data visibility are native parts of the runtime.

Yes. 3forge's entitlements framework allows fine-grained control over what data each user or role can see, down to the individual row and column. This is enforced at the query execution layer within Database, so entitlement filtering cannot be bypassed from the UI. This is essential for multi-desk deployments where different trading desks or regions must have segregated views of shared data.

All client-server communication is encrypted via TLS. For data at rest, including 3forge Historical Database storage, encryption can be applied at the filesystem or volume level using your infrastructure's native encryption mechanisms. 3forge's integration with enterprise KMS systems ensures that encryption keys are managed externally and rotated according to your security policy.

Yes. 3forge logs user actions, authentication events, and data access at a configurable level of granularity. Audit logs can be exported to your firm's SIEM, log aggregation platform (Splunk, Elastic, etc.), or compliance archival system. This supports internal audit requirements as well as regulatory obligations under MiFID II, FINRA, and similar frameworks.

Yes. 3forge regularly undergoes security assessments as part of vendor due diligence processes at Tier-1 financial institutions. Our security documentation package, including architecture diagrams, penetration test summaries, and data handling policies, is available to clients under NDA during the procurement process.

3forge publishes major named releases approximately three to four times per year, aligned with seasonal cadences. Each release includes new features, performance improvements, and bug fixes. Patch releases addressing critical issues are made available on an as-needed basis between major releases.

All releases are documented in the Release Notes.

Upgrades are designed to be backward-compatible with existing layouts and configurations. The standard process involves deploying the new 3forge binary in a staging environment, running your existing application suite through acceptance tests, and then promoting to production. 3forge's support team can assist with upgrade planning for complex environments.

Yes, maintaining backward compatibility is a core commitment at 3forge. Existing AMIScript, layouts, and datamodels continue to function across version upgrades. When behavioral changes are introduced, they are clearly documented in the release notes with migration guidance. Deprecated features are typically supported for multiple release cycles before removal.

With each major release, 3forge publishes a webinar walking through the key new features with live demonstrations. These are available on-demand via Wistia and linked directly from the Release Notes page. Clients subscribed to 3forge updates are notified when new releases and webinars are published.

3forge projects should be managed with normal software engineering discipline. Layouts and relevant configuration should live in source control, and deployments should be promoted through at least development and production, ideally with a QA or UAT stage in between. Teams should validate full built dashboards and supporting configuration in lower environments before promotion, rather than treating a layout export by itself as production-ready.

Yes. The Smart Debugger, introduced in the Winter 2024 release, provides step-through debugging of AMIScript directly within the development environment. It supports breakpoints, variable inspection, and call stack visualization. This replaces the need to use external logging as a primary diagnostic tool during development.

Yes. The 3forge IDE allows developers to edit, execute, and test AMIScript callbacks directly against a connected 3forge instance. Changes can be tested against live or test data before being committed to the layout definition or promoted to a higher environment. Transient object support also allows exploratory code changes that do not affect the stored layout until explicitly saved.

Yes. Most clients operate at least three environments: development, UAT, and production. 3forge's source control integration and SDLC hooks are designed to support promotion workflows between these environments. Layouts and configurations are stored as files that can be versioned and promoted using standard CI/CD pipelines.

Testing should cover code correctness, data availability, entitlements, performance under load, and deployment behavior. For data models and application logic, teams should validate not only whether code compiles, but also whether datasource assumptions, schema assumptions, and refresh behavior are correct. Strong 3forge testing includes inspection of intermediate results, validation of user-specific entitlements, and promotion testing in lower environments before release.

3forge offers product documentation, release notes, support resources, certification, and project de-risking services. In addition to standard support channels, 3forge can help customers with technical assessments, implementation guidance, architecture questions, and structured intervention for high-pressure or underperforming projects. 3forge is not only a software platform, but also a delivery partner when needed.

Full technical documentation, including the AMIScript reference, component API, configuration guides, and architecture diagrams, is available at docs.3forge.com. Documentation is updated with each release and includes searchable API references, tutorials, and worked examples.

3forge includes a built-in monitoring console that exposes runtime metrics: memory usage per table, subscription throughput, query execution times, and JVM heap statistics. Column memory analysis tools (available since Fall 2023) help identify inefficient data schemas. The REST API (Spring 2025) also makes monitoring data accessible to external observability platforms like Grafana or Datadog.

For complex production issues, 3forge's engineering team engages directly through the support channel, often requesting 3forge thread dumps, heap snapshots, or server logs for root cause analysis.

Yes. Active clients have access to 3forge's developer portal and knowledge base, which includes searchable Q&A, common patterns and recipes, migration guides, and community-contributed examples. Client engineering teams also participate in a shared Slack community where 3forge engineers are active and available for technical discussion.

Yes. 3forge provides structured onboarding and training programs delivered by solutions engineers, covering AMIScript development, datamodel design, feed handler configuration, and production deployment best practices. Training can be conducted on-site or remotely, and is tailored to the experience level and use cases of each client team.

Yes. 3forge's solutions engineering team provides hands-on implementation support: from initial architecture review and data model design through to production go-live. For clients with specific delivery timelines, 3forge can embed engineers within the client team to accelerate development. Our enterprise services offering covers ongoing strategic and technical support beyond initial deployment.

AI integration is an active area of development at 3forge. The Summer–Fall 2025 release lays the groundwork for upcoming AI capabilities, including performance improvements to the historical database that make AI workflows more cost-effective at scale. Our view is that AI requires a strong real-time data foundation to deliver meaningful results in capital markets, and 3forge is that foundation.

Specific AI roadmap details are shared with clients through our product briefing program. Contact us to schedule a roadmap discussion.

An application engine is a shared runtime that standardizes the common infrastructure every serious application needs: connectivity, security, state management, monitoring, and lifecycle control. 3forge applies that idea specifically to financial institutions. Instead of rebuilding the same plumbing for every risk tool, operational monitor, or reporting workflow, teams build on one finance-native runtime that already understands real-time data, deterministic behavior, entitlements, and auditability.

Packaged vendor software can be quick to deploy for narrow workflows, but it often limits flexibility and ties roadmap decisions to the vendor. Full custom build offers control, but teams must assemble and maintain every layer themselves. 3forge sits between those models: it gives teams a prebuilt runtime for the hard, repetitive infrastructure while leaving the institution free to define its own workflows, logic, interfaces, and operating model.

These describe the four pillars of the 3forge platform. Live Data refers to governed access across real-time and historical data, plus event-driven processing. Live User Interface refers to the front-end layer for dashboards, forms, pivots, and workflows. Live Workbench refers to the browser-based environment for building, testing, diagnosing, and operating applications. Live Scripting refers to the runtime-native business logic layer used to encode calculations, transformations, callbacks, and reusable application behavior.

No. Dashboards are one visible output of the platform, but 3forge is better understood as an application runtime. It supports data integration, event processing, workflows, reporting, operational tooling, governed data access, and full user-facing applications. Reducing 3forge to visualization alone understates the architecture and makes the platform sound much narrower than it is.

LivePivots is 3forge's approach to turning pivoting into a live operational capability rather than a static spreadsheet exercise. It allows users to aggregate and re-aggregate large, multi-source datasets, apply filters and permissions, and work with both real-time and historical data in one governed interface. The key point is not just that users can pivot data, but that they can do it at scale, with entitlements, and inside live workflows.

3forge is designed to virtualize access across a broad range of databases, feeds, APIs, and legacy systems so teams can work with them through one governed layer. Real-time and resting datasets can be queried, joined, enriched, and operationalized together without forcing every workflow to rebuild integration logic from scratch. This is especially important in finance, where useful workflows often depend on combining live market or transaction data with reference, risk, and historical context.

3forge supports both developer-centric and analyst-centric workflows. Python support is relevant for research, analysis, validation, automation, and machine learning workflows that need governed access to enterprise data. ODBC support is relevant for Excel and BI users who want familiar tools without recreating critical joins, entitlements, or calculations locally. This lets firms preserve flexibility for end users while moving sensitive logic and governance back into the shared platform.

Guaranteed messaging in 3forge is about durability and continuity through message journaling and replay, so downstream components can catch up after an outage or reconnect. It should not be described as duplicate suppression or exactly-once delivery unless a more specific implementation has been documented for that use case. Being precise here matters because technical buyers will notice overclaims.

Yes. 3forge supports FDC3 2.0 and deployment in desktop container environments such as interop.io and OpenFin. That matters for firms that need 3forge applications to participate in broader desktop workflows rather than operate in isolation. Interoperability is often a major concern in trading and operational desktop environments.

Yes. 3forge can use the same live application context to generate dashboards, PDF reports, emails, and role-specific outputs. This means consistent logic, entitlements, and presentation across monitoring screens, management reporting, and operational distribution, without a separate reporting product.

3forge's AI positioning is strongest when framed around governed adoption rather than generic AI excitement. The platform creates the conditions for responsible AI by providing real-time governed data access, resilient runtime infrastructure, entitlement-aware control, and observability. 3forge is designed to help firms scale AI without bypassing controls, duplicating legacy complexity, or creating opaque access paths to sensitive data.

3forge MCP is the mechanism by which AI systems can discover 3forge-managed data and schemas, invoke approved methods, and operate within the same governed environment used by human applications. The strategic value is that AI access can be routed through a single control plane rather than a patchwork of custom integrations, making MCP relevant not only to AI enablement, but to auditability, permissioning, and operational control.

Yes. Agents access data through governed pathways, inherit permissions, and can be logged, monitored, and controlled centrally. This is a much stronger message than simply saying 3forge is "AI-ready," because it connects AI enablement to the needs of security, compliance, and operational teams.

3forge can be adopted in several ways. Some organizations prefer turnkey delivery, where 3forge builds and delivers the application. Others prefer a hybrid model, where 3forge engineers work alongside the client team. Others build directly on the platform with internal teams. The underlying runtime remains the same across these models, so firms can evolve from assisted delivery to greater internal ownership over time.

Yes. 3forge can support troubled projects by complementing the client team, taking ownership of targeted deliverables, or inserting a modular platform layer that reduces integration and delivery risk. This speaks directly to institutions that are already mid-stream in a difficult project and need acceleration without starting over completely.

3forge supports a spectrum of builders, but not every task requires the same skill level. Some users focus on dashboard construction or querying, while more advanced users handle scripting, event processing, data modeling, and plugin development. The platform is accessible to multiple technical profiles, while some capabilities are intended for engineers or technically strong platform teams.

3forge is positioned for risk, trading, operations, compliance, reporting, market data, reconciliations, pre-trade controls, and private capital workflows such as carry, waterfalls, and investor analytics. The platform's value compounds when a firm uses one engine across multiple workflows rather than buying or building each one separately.